Design Tokens

Design tokens are the foundational elements of Chen's Design System, representing the visual primitives that define colors, typography, spacing, and other stylistic properties. By using tokens instead of hard-coded values, we ensure consistency across components and enable systematic theming.

Chen's Design System leverages the default PandaCSS theme preset, which provides a robust set of design tokens out of the box. These tokens are defined as CSS custom properties and can be seamlessly integrated into components or extended to meet project-specific needs.

Default Theme Tokens

Below is a comprehensive list of design tokens provided by PandaCSS's default preset. These are categorized for clarity and ready to use in your components:

Colors

A structured palette of semantic and primitive colors.

// Example usage in a component
const styles = css({
color: 'yellow.500', // Primary yellow
backgroundColor: 'gray.900' // Dark background
});

Token Structure:

• Primitives: white, black, gray, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink
• Semantic: text, background, border, primary, secondary, error, warning, success, info
• Scales: Each color has 50–950 shades (e.g., blue.200, red.600).

Typography

Predefined text styles for headings, body text, and more.

// Apply a heading style
css({ textStyle: 'heading.xl' });

Tokens Include:

• Font Families: sans (default system stack), mono (monospace)
• Font Sizes: xs, sm, md, lg, xl, 2xl to 6xl
• Font Weights: thin, extralight, light, normal, medium, semibold, bold, extrabold, black
• Line Heights: none, tight, normal, relaxed, loose
• Letter Spacing: tighter, tight, normal, wide, wider, widest

Spacing & Sizes

Consistent spacing scales for margins, padding, and dimensions.

// Apply a spacing token
css({ padding: 'spacing.4', width: 'sizes.full' });

Tokens Include:

• Spacing: 0, 1 (4px), 2 (8px), up to 40 (160px)
• Sizes: xs, sm, md, lg, xl, 2xl to 4xl, plus full (100%), screen (100vh/100vw)

Radii

Border radius tokens for rounded corners.

css({ borderRadius: 'radii.lg' });

Tokens: none, sm, md, lg, xl, full (9999px).

Breakpoints

Responsive design tokens for media queries.

// Responsive style example
css({
fontSize: { base: 'md', md: 'lg', lg: 'xl' }
});

Default Breakpoints:

• sm: 640px
• md: 768px
• lg: 1024px
• xl: 1280px
• 2xl: 1536px

Shadows

Elevation and depth tokens.

css({ boxShadow: 'shadows.xl' });

Tokens: xs, sm, md, lg, xl, 2xl.

Z-Index

Layering control for components.

css({ zIndex: 'zIndex.modal' });

Tokens: auto, 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 (predefined for common use cases like modals, tooltips).

Durations & Easings

Animation timing tokens.

css({ transition: 'all duration.300 easing.ease-out' });

• Durations: fast (150ms), normal (300ms), slow (500ms)
• Easings: default, linear, ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out.

Customization

While Chen's Design System uses the default tokens for consistency, you can extend or override them in your panda.config.ts to align with brand-specific requirements. Learn more in the PandaCSS Theme Documentation.

Next Up: Learn how to apply these tokens in components using Recipes or customize them for your project.