Why token exports break after handoff, how to keep reference and alias layers aligned, and what a single color source of truth needs to cover.
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Most teams do not lose consistency because they chose the wrong blue. They lose it because one color value lives in Figma, a slightly different one ships in CSS, and Tailwind gets updated last. Once those files stop moving together, every revision compounds the mismatch. Drift is operational, not aesthetic.
The safest structure is two-layered. Reference tokens store the actual color values. Alias tokens point to those values with semantic names like surface, border, accent, or success. That means a palette refresh updates the value layer without forcing a rename across product UI, design files, and implementation. It also makes dark mode pairing far less chaotic because the role survives while the underlying value swaps.
Teams that already know they will need more than one lane — brand, dark mode, seasonal — gain the most from deciding the export base early. Generate CSS, Tailwind, and Figma tokens from the same reference layer, and derive the dark theme from those same references rather than from a separate file. The value is having one coherent export base instead of collecting assets piecemeal and stitching them together later.
