Design Token System

Token systems are infrastructure. Like good infrastructure, they should be invisible when they work and catastrophically obvious when they don’t. This project rebuilt the token layer from the ground up — not to add new tokens, but to make the existing ones meaningful.

The previous system had accumulated tokens the way codebases accumulate dead code: gradually, without intention, until color-blue-7 and color-brand-primary pointed to the same value and nobody knew which to use.

Architecture

The new system operates on three layers: brand (raw values), semantic (decisions about what those values mean), and component (specific applications). Each layer is allowed to reference only the layer beneath it — never raw values in component tokens, never component tokens in semantic ones.

A token without a clear semantic meaning is just a variable with extra steps.

The token schema is defined in a single TypeScript configuration that Style Dictionary reads at build time:

import OpenAI from "openai";
const client = new OpenAI();

const response = await client.responses.create({
  model: "gpt-5.4",
  input: "Write a short bedtime story about a unicorn.",
});

console.log(response.output_text);

Platform output

Style Dictionary transforms the source tokens into platform-native formats: CSS custom properties for web, Swift constants for iOS, Kotlin objects for Android. A single source of truth, three platform outputs, zero drift.