AddThisFeature

Spacing Scale

Reduce the app's spacing to a small set of steps that repeat across every surface.

moderate Design Systems

What it adds

A named spacing scale covering gaps, padding, and section rhythm, with every existing value in the app mapped onto it.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Collect every spacing value currently in the codebase and count how often each appears. The result is usually a handful of genuine intentions surrounded by dozens of near-misses that were nudged once and never revisited.

  2. 2

    Define a scale that is fine at the small end, where control padding lives, and coarse at the large end, where section separation lives. A linear scale gives too many indistinguishable large steps and too few small ones.

  3. 3

    Separate the tokens used inside a component from the ones used between components and between page sections, and name them so the difference is obvious. The same number serving both purposes means a change to button padding also changes the gap between sections.

  4. 4

    Migrate one component family at a time and remove the old values as you go. Do not add the scale alongside the existing spacing and leave both in use — a half-migrated system is less consistent than the one it replaced, because now there are two right answers.

  5. 5

    Display Density owns switching the whole app between comfortable and compact; this entry owns the steps themselves. Express the scale so a density mode can rescale it, and leave the mode switching to that feature.

Edge cases it handles

7
  • Spacing inside a component and spacing between components change for different reasons and at different rates. Keep them in separate token groups, or tightening a card's padding will also close up the gap between cards.
  • A density mode has to rescale the whole scale coherently. Values that are hardcoded, or expressed in units the mode cannot touch, will stay at their comfortable size while everything around them tightens.
  • Optical alignment sometimes demands a value that is not on the scale — an icon that needs a half step to sit on the text baseline, a badge that needs to overlap its anchor. Allow those, name them, and record why, rather than pretending the scale covers every case.
  • Values that sit close to a token but not on it are the ones that erode the system. Flag them during review so a stray value has to be justified rather than merged unnoticed.
  • Adjacent margins can collapse into one another, so a value that looks correct in isolation produces a smaller gap in place. Prefer a single owner of each gap over margins on both sides.
  • The scale must hold across breakpoints. A section gap that is right on a wide screen is usually too large on a phone, so define which steps change responsively and which are fixed.
  • Do not renumber or reorder the scale after adoption. Every existing usage silently shifts, and the change is invisible in review.

Definition of done

9
  • A single spacing scale is defined, with steps that are fine at the small end and coarse at the large end.
  • Internal component spacing and layout spacing are separate named groups.
  • Every migrated component uses scale tokens, with no leftover hardcoded values alongside them.
  • The scale can be rescaled as a whole for a density mode.
  • Off-scale values exist only as documented optical exceptions with a recorded reason.
  • Near-token values are flagged during review rather than merged unnoticed.
  • Which steps change at each breakpoint is defined and applied consistently.
  • The feature matches the existing design system.
  • No existing functionality is broken.

Related features

How it works

  1. 1

    Copy the link

    Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.

  2. 2

    Give it to your AI

    Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.

  3. 3

    It inspects, then implements

    Your agent reads your existing app first, then adds the feature to fit it.

Works with your stack

These instructions are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and reuse what you already have — rather than assuming a particular stack.

Need it tighter than that? Customize the feature and tell it exactly what you're running.