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Decision 0021

One token file generates every surface

Architecture decision record 0021: One token file generates every surface

Status
Accepted
Date
2026-09-03

Context

Maximum beauty with minimal design means one source of truth and nothing hand-tuned per surface.

The three plans

  • Grok: dim phosphor, one accent, no neon soup; 16-colour capable; fewer themes than docs.
  • Fable: one config drives Hyprland, waybar, terminal, GTK, Neovim; six to eight curated themes; one mono and one sans.
  • Codex: minimal, quiet, dense when needed, dark and light, animation sparingly; avoid gamer styling, hacker green, glassmorphism, giant chat windows.

Decision

design/tokens.toml (colour scales, one accent, type scale, spacing, radii, motion) generates the TUI theme, the Iced theme, the terminal palette, the Niri configuration fragment, and palette-level GTK and Qt themes (they honour no more). Inter for interface text, JetBrains Mono for code and the TUI; a proper icon set, no patched fonts. Dark and light as equals; motion only when it explains a state change; no neon, glass, gradients or sci-fi noise. Published budgets: power-on to prompt, idle memory, tacid diff latency, no-op apply, voice latencies; measured in CI on the reference laptop.

Consequences

  • Themes are token files; contributions cannot introduce hard-coded colours.
  • The badges (NET, AIRGAP, SOVEREIGN, MIC, SELF-BUILT) are part of the design system, not afterthoughts.

Alternatives rejected

  • Per-app theming: drift and inconsistency within a month.
  • Nerd Font glyphs everywhere: legibility and licensing noise.