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Courses/Introduction to Design Systems/Design Tokens: The DNA of a Design System/
Exercise #10

Token Versioning, Renaming & Safe Migration

What happens when the design system team realizes a token name is confusing and needs to be renamed (e.g., renaming color-brand to color-interactive-primary)?

If the team simply deletes the old token in the next release, every consuming frontend app using that token will break.

The Safe Token Migration Pattern:

  1. Introduce the New Token: Add color-interactive-primary to the system.
  2. Alias the Old Token: Keep color-brand, but point its value to {color-interactive-primary}. In the documentation and compiler, mark color-brand as @deprecated.
  3. Ship Automated Codemods: Provide an automated CLI script that searches consuming repositories and renames the token automatically.
  4. Remove in Next Major Version: Only remove the deprecated alias in a subsequent SemVer MAJOR release after adoption metrics show zero usages.

Topics

What Are Design Tokens?
The 3-Tier Token Architecture
Tier 1: Global Primitive Tokens
Tier 2: Semantic (Alias) Tokens
Tier 3: Component-Scoped Tokens
Token Naming Taxonomies: The CTI Convention
Cross-Platform Token Compilation (Style Dictionary)
Composite Tokens: Typography Sets and Shadows
Resolving Token Dependency Chains
Token Versioning, Renaming & Safe Migration

From lesson

1

Design Tokens: The DNA of a Design System

Level 3 · Design Tokens & Foundations

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