Tokens
The semantic token vocabulary in tokens.css — colour roles, sizes, shapes and motion — how dark mode is mapped, and what the design-system passes refuse.
Tokens are semantic — a role, never a measurement — so a rebrand is one edit per role rather than a hunt through call sites, and a component that only ever names roles themes itself.
The colour roles
| Group | Tokens | What they are for |
|---|---|---|
| Surfaces | --color-surface, -raised, -sunken, -hover, -overlay, -inverse, --color-translucent, -strong | The page, then cards and chrome above it, inset rows below it, the panel a popover draws, and the dark body a tooltip uses. The two translucent fills are alpha rather than a grey step, so one value works over any surface in the ramp. |
| Borders | --color-border, -strong, -subtle | The default hairline, the heavier rule a table column or a sticky header needs, and the quiet one inside a card. |
| Text | --color-text, -muted, -faint, -inverse | Body, secondary, placeholder and timestamp, and text on surface-inverse. |
| Accent and status | --color-accent, -hover, -soft, -fg; --color-danger, -success, -warning, -info, each with a -soft | Accent means "selected" everywhere in the system. Each status tone carries a soft companion for the fill behind it. |
| Interaction | --color-focus, -scrim, -row-hover, -row-selected, -row-selected-hover, -skeleton, -skeleton-highlight, -control-knob | The focus outline, the dialog scrim, table row states, the loading shimmer, and the switch thumb that stays light on both tracks. |
| Pipeline | --color-pipeline-1 … -6 | An ordered cool-to-warm ramp, six values because a sales pipeline has six stages. Terminal stages keep success and danger instead. |
| Canvas | --color-canvas, -grid, --color-edge, -hover, -selected, -ghost, --color-handle, -active, --color-selection-fill, -stroke, --color-guide | A canvas is the one surface explicitly behind everything, and the only place a 1px line must stay readable at 10% zoom and quiet at 250%. The guide is deliberately not the accent: two accent lines meeting at a selected node is one line too many to read. |
| Chat | --color-bubble-in, -in-fg, --color-bubble-out, -out-fg | The two bubble sides, each with its own foreground. |
| Run | --color-run-active, -active-soft, --color-run-skipped, -skipped-soft | A tool call's step card. running is not info — four blue alerts stacked in a thread is a page of warnings about nothing — and skipped is not text-faint, because "this did not run" is a state rather than a de-emphasis. |
| Event palette | --color-event-1 … -8, each with -soft and -fg | Eight nominal tones for calendar events: a solid for a bar or a dot, a soft for a block fill, a foreground for text on it. Spread round the wheel rather than stepped along it, and indigo is absent because indigo means "selected". |
| Calendar | --color-now, --color-off-hours, --color-busy, -soft, --color-blocked, --color-available, -soft | The now-line is a landmark, not a warning, so it is not danger: a rebrand that cools the danger red must be able to leave the clock hand alone. |
| Channels | --color-channel-instagram, -whatsapp, -facebook, -tiktok, -widget, each with -soft | One pair per messaging platform — glyph and the tinted circle behind it. Brand-adjacent, not brand-exact: every solid clears 3:1 on its own soft in both themes. Widget is the product's own channel, so it is the accent. |
Sizes, shapes and motion
| Group | Tokens | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Radius | --radius-control, -card, -chip, -bubble, -island, -pill | Roles, not a t-shirt scale. 6px reads as a control at field height where 8px reads as a pill. |
| Elevation | --shadow-raised, -overlay, -modal, -drag, -island, --shadow-card-inset, --shadow-secondary-button | Tints go through plain :root variables, so the dark theme re-tints all of them in three lines. A card is a surface step plus a 1px inset ring, not a lifted plane. |
| Motion | --transition-duration-instant (80ms), -fast (120ms), -base (180ms), -slow (260ms), --transition-delay-tooltip (400ms), --ease-standard, -entrance, -exit, -spring, and the --animate-* set | Entrances decelerate, exits accelerate. The --animate-* values inline their easing because the keyframe extractor scans them literally. |
| Z-index | --z-index-sticky (10), -island (15), -rail (20), -dropdown (30), -drag (40), -overlay (50), -popover (60), -toast (70), -tooltip (80) | One ordered ladder so no component invents a number. The namespace is --z-index-*, not --z-*; that is what makes Tailwind emit z-popover. |
| Chrome heights | --height-topbar, -field, -field-sm, -row-compact, -row-cozy, -row-comfortable, -touch | --height-touch is 44px, the WCAG 2.5.8 AAA target, opt-in through the touch-target utility — never by retuning --height-field under (pointer: coarse). |
| Time grid | --height-hour-compact, -cozy, -comfortable, --height-event-min | Pixels, and mirrored in lib/time/timeGrid.ts: the event geometry is arithmetic on the same numbers the CSS draws with, and a test parses this file to prove they agree. rem would break that. |
| Band thresholds | --container-compact (600px), --container-wide (900px), --container-inline (1280px) | The same three numbers as the Band boundaries in lib/interaction/layout.ts, asserted by a test that parses this file. They generate both max-w-* and the @compact: / @wide: / @inline: container variants. Pixels, because container queries in rem resolve against the root font size while a ResizeObserver reports pixels. |
| Content measures | --container-drawer, -auth, -auth-wide, -form, -composer, -prose, -app | Max-widths for content columns, in the same namespace. |
| Layout widths | --width-rail, -rail-expanded, -nav-panel, -sidenav, -list, -inspector, -panel, -column, -column-rail, -time-gutter, -time-column | Semantic roles again: --width-list and --width-inspector being equal today is a coincidence, not a synonym. w-* reads this namespace; max-w-* does not, so a max-width has to be written max-w-[var(--width-…)]. |
| Spacing | --spacing-gutter, -tight, -loose | p-gutter compiles to the variable, so a band scope re-assigns the variable and every p-gutter and gap-gutter already written below it becomes fluid. |
| Viewport breakpoints | --breakpoint-sm … -2xl | Tailwind's stock values, declared explicitly. They drive shell chrome only — a module can be 700px wide inside a 2560px viewport, so the viewport answers the wrong question. |
| Type | --font-sans, --font-mono, --font-display, --font-weight-*, and the roles --text-title, -heading, -body, -label, -meta, -micro, -nano | Size and line height are baked; weight is not, so text-sm font-semibold still means what it says. The upper register (--text-title-4 … --text-display) is for auth screens and empty states. Tailwind's text-xs / text-sm / text-base are aliased onto the same ramp so two scales cannot run side by side. |
| Utilities | focus-ring, skeleton, touch-target | focus-ring uses outline, not a ring box-shadow: data-dense screens are full of overflow-hidden containers that clip a shadow, and an outline is never clipped. |
How dark mode works
The dark palette is declared once in a plain :root block, and then mapped onto the semantic names
twice: once under @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) scoped to :root:not([data-theme]), and
once under [data-theme='dark']. An explicit choice — either value — disables the media rule, and
the attribute selector is deliberately not :root-prefixed so an embedding host can put
data-theme on its own wrapper element instead of on <html>.
Duplicating the map is the point. light-dark() would end up nested inside the color-mix()
Tailwind compiles opacity modifiers to: bg-accent/50 becomes a color-mix() over the variable,
guarded by @supports, with a hex fallback baked from the light value at build time. The two blocks
are kept honest by a validate pass that fails if either declares a property the other does not.
@theme compiles into @layer theme, and unlayered rules beat layered ones regardless of source
order, so these overrides win wherever the app places the @import — no !important and no
ordering fragility. color-scheme is set in both blocks and is not cosmetic: forms/Select is a
real native <select>, and without it the dropdown, the scrollbars and autofill stay light.
No component carries a dark: variant and none hardcodes a colour, so theming — dark mode
included — is a tokens-only edit to this one file. Reduced motion works the same way: the
prefers-reduced-motion block retunes --transition-duration-* and the --animate-* set rather
than resetting animations globally, which would also freeze the spinner.
Why @theme static
@theme static keeps every variable in :root even when no utility currently uses it. Without it
Tailwind tree-shakes unused theme variables, and the design-system gallery — which reads token
values back with getComputedStyle — renders them as a phantom em dash. That is also why Tailwind's
own breakpoint values are re-declared here: their defaults live in a non-static @theme and get
shaken out.
What the passes enforce
pnpm validate runs these; pass 11 is the design system's own.
| Rule | What fails |
|---|---|
| 11(a) dark-block parity | A property declared in one dark block and not the other. The two are duplicated on purpose, and this is what keeps the duplicate in lockstep. |
| 11(b) no raw colour | #rgb, rgb(, rgba(, hsl( or hsla( in any .ts/.tsx under packages/ui/src, outside icons/ where the match would be SVG path data. Avatar is the one component that needs a ramp, and it renders oklch() over --avatar-* tokens. |
| 11(d) barrel completeness | A component file missing from its directory's barrel, a directory barrel missing from src/index.ts, or a new directory classified as neither a component nor a non-component directory. internal/ is the opt-out. |
11(e) focus-ring | The utility written bare. It sets outline unconditionally, so bare it draws all the time — on the deals board that was every card, permanently ringed. Write focus-visible:focus-ring. |
| 11(g) no viewport prefix | sm: / md: / lg: / xl: / 2xl: in apps/shell/src/modules. A module is sized by its container: use useBand when the answer changes what renders, a container variant when it only changes how it looks. Shell chrome is exempt, because the shell really is window-sized. |
11(h) no text-[Npx] | A pixel size outside the type scale, anywhere in the shell, the gallery or packages/ui. |
| 11(i) glued classes | A class written flush against a template interpolation. Tailwind reads source as text, so shadow-island${ matches no utility, the rule is never generated, and nothing reports it — a missing class is a missing rule, not an error. |
11(j) zero-sized <svg> | h-0, w-0 or size-0 on an <svg>. The specification disables rendering of an element whose width or height is zero, and overflow: visible never gets a say; it cost this repository every line on the canvas. |
Both 11(g) and 11(h) are adjudicated by the TypeScript parser rather than a line regex, because the spelling each bans is also the spelling its own comment has to use — a comment is trivia and never a node, which is the property the rule rests on.