--- title: Linting Your Design Tokens, what and why | daily.dev description: Design tokens are code and deserve the same linting rigor as CSS or JavaScript. This post makes the case for design token linting and breaks down what to lint... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/linting-your-design-tokens-what-and-why-g2864c7nq twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Linting Your Design Tokens, what and why | daily.dev og:description: Design tokens are code and deserve the same linting rigor as CSS or JavaScript. This post makes the case for design token linting and breaks down what to lint... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/linting-your-design-tokens-what-and-why-g2864c7nq og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/g2864C7nQ.png og:image:alt: Linting Your Design Tokens, what and why og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Linting Your Design Tokens, what and why **[Always Twisted](https://daily.dev/sources/alwaystwisted)** · 13 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Design tokens are code and deserve the same linting rigor as CSS or JavaScript. This post makes the case for design token linting and breaks down what to lint across three tiers: critical rules (broken references, circular references, type-value mismatches, incomplete structure), quality rules (naming conventions, duplicate values, colour contrast compliance, dark mode completeness, reference depth limits), and nice-to-have rules (documentation, semantic naming, unused tokens, scale consistency). Each rule category maps to a severity level — errors that block, warnings that surface issues, and informational suggestions — with guidance on building up a ruleset from minimum viable to comprehensive. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Where to Lint Design Tokens](https://daily.dev/posts/where-to-lint-design-tokens-xn9wlxngm) · Always Twisted · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Design Token Naming Best Practices](https://daily.dev/posts/design-token-naming-best-practices-mlzah7ha4) · Netguru · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Introducing Linting to your Existing Design Tokens System](https://daily.dev/posts/introducing-linting-to-your-existing-design-tokens-system-klpfefxod) · Always Twisted · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ui-design](https://daily.dev/tags/ui-design), [#accessibility](https://daily.dev/tags/accessibility), [#design-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/design-systems) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/linting-your-design-tokens-what-and-why-g2864c7nq) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Linting Your Design Tokens, what and why","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/linting-your-design-tokens-what-and-why-g2864c7nq","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/linting-your-design-tokens-what-and-why-g2864c7nq"},"datePublished":"2026-05-06T14:34:33.288Z","dateModified":"2026-05-06T14:35:01.481Z","description":"Design tokens are code and deserve the same linting rigor as CSS or JavaScript. 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