design-tokens

design-tokens is a skill for Claude Code from oborchers/fractional-cto. It costs 63 tokens per session (858 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A set of guidance for organizing shared visual values such as colors, spacing, type sizes, and component styles. It uses design tokens, named values that let an interface keep its appearance consistent across components and themes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to build theming systems, CSS custom properties, dark mode, color naming conventions, and theme-switching architecture.
Why use it?
It helps teams change themes, including dark mode, without scattering raw color and spacing values throughout the code. Purpose-based names also make styles easier to understand when the visual design changes.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the saas-design-principles plugin — 13 skills, 1 command, 1 agent shipped together

Good fit Use it to build theming systems, CSS custom properties, dark mode, color naming conventions, and theme-switching architecture.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/design-tokens
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add oborchers/fractional-cto --skill design-tokens
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/oborchers/fractional-cto

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install saas-design-principles, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 13 skills, 1 command, 1 agent.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for design-tokens

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/design-tokens/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/design-tokens)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/design-tokens"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/design-tokens/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for design-tokens

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/design-tokens"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/oborchers/fractional-cto/design-tokens.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 63 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 858 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00063 $0.00858
Opus 5.5 $0.00025 $0.00343
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00013 $0.00172
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00086

Measured 5d ago against content hash c48216d96505, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

design-tokens scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

saas-design-principles/skills/design-tokens/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Design Tokens Make Theming a Non-Event

The industry has converged on a three-tier token architecture. Adopting it correctly means theme switching requires only toggling a class — no component re-renders, no complex logic.

Three-Tier Token Architecture

Tier 1: Primitive Tokens

Raw values. The palette.

Examples: #3B82F6, 16px, 600

Tier 2: Semantic Tokens

Purpose-driven aliases. The meaning layer.

Examples: --color-text-primary, --color-bg-surface, --spacing-md

Tier 3: Component Tokens

Scoped references. The component layer.

Examples: --button-bg, --card-border-radius, --input-border-color

The Critical Naming Rule

Name tokens by purpose, not appearance.

Bad (appearance) Good (purpose)
--color-white --color-bg-surface
--color-blue-500 --color-action-primary
--font-large --font-heading
--color-gray-200 --color-border-default

--color-bg-surface works in both light and dark mode. --color-white becomes meaningless the moment themes change.

Theme Switching Architecture

Use CSS custom properties with a class toggle on the root element. CSS variables cascade down, automatically updating every component without re-rendering the component tree.

Implementation pattern:

  1. Define semantic tokens as CSS custom properties
  2. Override values in a .dark (or [data-theme="dark"]) selector
  3. Toggle the class/attribute on <html> to switch themes
  4. No JavaScript re-renders needed

Dark Mode Implementation

Use the hybrid approach:

  1. Detect system preference with prefers-color-scheme
  2. Allow manual override via a toggle
  3. Store the preference in localStorage
  4. Apply via a data-theme attribute on <html>

Consider Twitter's three-option model for apps where users spend long sessions:

  • Default (light)
  • Dim (reduced contrast dark)
  • Lights Out (true black)

W3C Design Tokens Community Group

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 89 lines · 63 tokens per session scan A c48216d96505

Subscribe to this mod's changes

design-tokens is a skill published in the GitHub repository oborchers/fractional-cto (32 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 63 tokens to every session and 858 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-10-13.

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