theme.hardcode border color

theme.hardcode-border-color

Rule ID: theme.hardcode-border-color Severity: WARN Category: theme Target Standards: W3C Design Tokens Community Group (DTCG), Tailwind CSS Border Token Architecture

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1. Overview & Core Invariant

Detects hardcoded border and divider colors using primitive palettes, raw hex literals, or static monochrome

Core Invariant:

"Component borders and dividers must use semantic tokens (border-border, border-input), never primitive palette or arbitrary hex colors."

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2. Technical Grounding & Engine Realities

Border lines define container elevation, separation, and affordance. When border colors are hardcoded (e.g. border-gray-200, border-[#e5e5e5]):

1. Invisibility in Dark Mode: A light gray border (#e5e5e5) provides zero contrast or turns into an inverted stark line in dark themes.
2. Theme Disconnect: When the primary or brand palette changes, borders remain pinned to legacy gray scales.
3. Inconsistent Boundaries: Disparate components end up using gray-200, slate-200, zinc-300 arbitrarily for identical UI dividers.

Charites enforces using centralized border tokens (border-border, border-input, divide-border).

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3. Vulnerability & Risk Taxonomy

Risk Vector	Severity	Impact
Dark Mode Invisibility	HIGH	Hardcoded light borders vanish or glow unnaturally on dark theme backgrounds.
Visual Fragmentation	MEDIUM	Different shades of gray borders destroy cohesive surface elevation hierarchy.

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4. Non-Compliant Code Patterns (Bad Examples)

ASTRO (Hardcoded border primitive and arbitrary hex):

<div class="border border-gray-200 divide-y divide-[#e5e5e5]">List</div>

TSX (Primitive directional border in JSX):

export function Card() {
  return <div className="border-t-slate-300 border-x-[#cccccc]">Content</div>;
}

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5. Compliant Implementation Patterns (Good Examples)

ASTRO (Using semantic border and divider tokens):

<div class="border border-border divide-y divide-border">List</div>

TSX (Semantic border tokens with dark mode adaptability):

export function Card() {
  return <div className="border-t border-border">Content</div>;
}

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6. Detection & Verification Pipeline (How The Rule Evaluates Code)

This theme rule evaluates source templates against the project's design token graph:

flowchart TD
    Node["AST Node (Astro / TSX element)"] --> Extract["1. Extract Class Names (e.g. 'hover:bg-primary/10')"]
    Extract --> Strip["2. Strip Variants (hover:, dark:, sm:) -> 'bg-primary/10'"]
    Strip --> Split["3. Split Opacity Modifier -> Utility: 'bg-primary', Opacity: '/10'"]
    Split --> Convention["4. Query TokenConvention (Candidate: '--color-primary-light')"]
    Convention --> GraphQuery{"5. Check Token Graph (Does token exist in active scope?)"}
    GraphQuery -- "No (Banana Test)" --> Safe["Pass (Valid Custom / Untokenized Color)"]
    GraphQuery -- "Yes (Official Token Exists)" --> IgnoreCheck{"6. Check charites:ignore directive"}
    IgnoreCheck -- "Ignored" --> Safe
    IgnoreCheck -- "Not Ignored" --> Diag["7. Emit Diagnostic: theme.hardcode-border-color with Replacement Suggestion"]

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Step-by-Step Evaluation:

1. AST Node Traversal: internal/analyzer streams JSX/Astro AST elements to the rule's Evaluate visitor.
2. Variant Normalization: Strips responsive (sm:, md:), interaction state (hover:, focus:), and theme (dark:) prefixes to isolate the core utility class.
3. Modifier Extraction: Parses utility segments and extracts slash opacity modifiers.
4. Token Convention Resolution: Consults the TokenConvention adapter to determine the official semantic design token replacement candidate.
5. Token Graph Verification (Banana Test): Queries token.Context to verify that the candidate token is declared in global.css or tokens.json within the element's scope. If not declared, the custom value is permitted without a false-positive diagnostic.
6. Directive Suppression Check: Inspects preceding AST comments for charites:ignore theme.hardcode-border-color.
7. Diagnostic Emission: Produces a structured diagnostic with line number, column span, and actionable replacement suggestion.

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7. Verification & Test Harness (How The Test Works: 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus)

This rule is rigorously tested and validated across the canonical 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus in tests/correctness/theme.hardcode-border-color/:

flowchart TD
    subgraph GoldenCorpus ["1-SSOT Tri-Corpus Test Matrix for theme.hardcode-border-color"]
        subgraph P ["Positive Corpus (tests/correctness/theme.hardcode-border-color/positive/)"]
            P1["P1: Obvious Direct Violation"]
            P2["P2: Indirect / Variant Concatenation"]
            P3["P3: Helper / clsx / cn Wrapper"]
            P4["P4: Deeply Nested Elements"]
            P5["P5: Aliased Imports / Re-exports"]
        end
        subgraph N ["Negative Corpus (tests/correctness/theme.hardcode-border-color/negative/)"]
            N1["N1: Valid Design Tokens"]
            N2["N2: Explicit charites:ignore Directive"]
            N3["N3: Third-Party / Vendor Components"]
            N4["N4: Clean Semantic HTML"]
            N5["N5: Untokenized Custom Values (Banana Test)"]
        end
        subgraph A ["Adversarial Corpus (tests/correctness/theme.hardcode-border-color/adversarial/)"]
            A1["A1: Template Literal Interpolations"]
            A2["A2: Ternary Conditional Expressions"]
            A3["A3: Spread Properties & Dynamic Overrides"]
            A4["A4: Dynamic Object Class Syntax"]
            A5["A5: Shadowed Variable Identifiers"]
            A6["A6: Nested Closures & HOC Wrappers"]
            A7["A7: Obfuscated Classes & Cyclic Tokens"]
        end
    end

    P --> TestRunner["Automated Runner (rule_test.go)"]
    N --> TestRunner
    A --> TestRunner
    TestRunner --> Gates["Quality Gates: Zero Panic, Zero False-Positive, Zero Bypass"]

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• Positive Fixtures (P1-P5): Verified to trigger diagnostics at exact lines and column spans.
• Negative Fixtures (N1-N5): Verified to produce zero diagnostics on valid tokens and legitimate exemptions.
• Adversarial Fixtures (A1-A7): Verified to prevent evasion across dynamic expressions, string interpolations, and cyclic references.

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8. How to Suppress (Ignore Directives)

If this pattern is required for an intentional exception, suppress the diagnostic using the canonical Charites Rule ID:

<!-- charites:ignore theme.hardcode-border-color intentional exception -->

// charites:ignore theme.hardcode-border-color intentional exception

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9. Configuration Reference (charites.yaml)

rules:
  theme.hardcode-border-color:
    severity: warn # error | warn | info | off