Design Tokens Are a Lie. Here’s What AI Actually Needs.
Design Tokens only solve visual consistency — they tell AI what color to use, not what that color means. The result? AI generates destructive actions in friendly blue and fatal errors that look like minor warnings. The real problem isn’t visual drift; it’s semantic drift. The fix: a semantic token layer with four namespaces (status, phase, boundary, action), three semantic domains, and immutable boundaries that make design intent machine-executable without losing nuance.