This release tightens the Tenzir design system into a simpler, implementation-agnostic source of truth. It clarifies the light and dark text hierarchy, unifies brand-gradient usage, and removes default shadows so downstream implementations can apply the system consistently.
🔧 Changes
Implementation-agnostic design system skill
The tenzir-design-system skill now focuses on the design system itself: machine-readable tokens plus the principles and invariants that define the style.
The skill owns two things: machine-readable tokens (data/brand.yml, data/tokens.yml) and the design decisions that explain how to apply them (color usage, typography, elevation, motion, iconography, layout, branded effects, and a short set of non-negotiable invariants). The per-tool integration guides that wired tokens into specific frameworks (Tailwind, shadcn, plain CSS, Quarto, slides, diagrams) and the bundled shadcn theme are gone; how the system gets realized in any given tool is out of scope. The result is a simpler, smaller system: strict light and dark modes, flat surfaces with shadows avoided, and the brand gradient used as a border or display accent.
Symmetric light and dark text hierarchy in the design system
The tenzir-design-system skill now defines one neutral text hierarchy that is symmetric across light and dark mode: emphasis text (headings, active text, icons) takes the mode's strongest neutral (neutral-800 light, neutral-50 dark), body text pulls one step in on both ends (neutral-700 light at 13.4:1, neutral-300 dark at 12.7:1), and the muted tiers step down from there (neutral-600/neutral-500 light; neutral-400 dark, the minimum text grey on dark surfaces).
Previously the default text role was the harsh pure-black neutral-800 (18.7:1), which is uncomfortable for long-form reading such as blog posts and docs. The canonical tokens now agree with the guidance: foreground means body text in both modes, headings pin to the emphasis shade, and the dark mapping gains a text_emphasis token so tooling can remap headings without consulting prose. The colors guide states the hierarchy once as a light/dark table with WCAG contrast validated per mode.
A coherence pass across the whole system also unified the brand gradient on the canonical blue-500 → green-500 ramp everywhere, keyed article-prose links to the primary role so they follow the dark remap, and reconciled the kicker's size between the typography and branded-effects guidance.
The shadow policy is now strict: the system carries no shadows by default, and the one sanctioned use is a light-mode surface floating over same-colored content — menus, popovers, and listboxes take shadow-m and toasts shadow-s. Hover and resting shadows on controls and cards are gone, dark mode uses no shadows at all, and the shadow scale slims to those two sizes, dropping the unused shadow-xs and shadow-l tokens.
