Theme Surface Map
Decide how page, card, popover, and dialog surfaces relate before each screen improvises.
What it adds
A defined relationship between every layered surface in the app — page, card, input, popover, dialog, elevated — in each theme.
What your agent is told to do
5
What your agent is told to do
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List every surface the app renders and place each at a defined level: the page background, cards and panels sitting on it, inputs sitting inside those, popovers and menus above them, and dialogs above everything.
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Give adjacent levels enough separation to be seen as separate without a border. Two surfaces one step apart on the ramp look identical on a poorly calibrated laptop screen, which is what most people are using.
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Verify the text and border tokens against every surface, not only against the page background. A muted text colour that reads comfortably on the page will often disappear on an elevated card in dark mode.
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Restrict translucent surfaces to cases where what sits behind them is known and controlled. A frosted popover over a photograph, a video, or a syntax-highlighted code block has no predictable contrast, so give those an opaque variant.
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In dark themes, express elevation primarily as a lighter surface rather than as a heavier shadow. A shadow on a near-black background is invisible, and the usual response — deepening it further — produces a dark halo instead of a sense of height.
Edge cases it handles
7
Edge cases it handles
7- Adjacent surface levels must remain distinguishable on uncalibrated displays and at low brightness, or the card boundary that carries the whole layout simply disappears.
- Text and border contrast has to hold on every layer, since a token verified only against the page background will fail on the elevated surfaces where it is used most.
- Translucent surfaces over unknown content must be avoided or given an opaque fallback, because contrast over an arbitrary photograph or video frame cannot be guaranteed by any token.
- Shadows and overlays need a coherent dark-mode treatment. Elevation in dark themes comes from surface lightness, not from a shadow nobody can see against a near-black page.
- Nesting depth must be bounded. A card inside a panel inside a dialog runs out of distinct surface steps, so define what happens at the fourth level rather than letting it degrade into flat sameness.
- The backdrop behind a dialog belongs to the surface map too — an opacity chosen for a light theme dims a dark theme into an unreadable grey.
- Surface roles are named through Semantic Color Tokens; this brief defines their relationship and ordering, not a second naming scheme.
Definition of done
9
Definition of done
9- Every surface in the app is assigned to a defined level in the map.
- Adjacent levels are visually distinguishable without relying on a border.
- Text and border tokens meet contrast requirements on every surface level, in every theme.
- Translucent surfaces are used only over controlled content, and an opaque variant exists.
- Dark themes convey elevation through surface lightness rather than shadow alone.
- Behaviour beyond the deepest defined nesting level is specified.
- Dialog backdrops are defined per theme rather than shared.
- The feature matches the existing design system.
- No existing functionality is broken.
Related features
Semantic Color Tokens
Semantic Color Tokens
Name colours by the job they do, so changing a theme is one edit rather than a sweep.
What it does
A vocabulary of role-named colour tokens — surface, text, border, accent, danger, success — that components reference instead of literal values.
How it works
- 1 Inventory every literal colour value in the codebase and group them by the job they are doing rather than by the shade they happen to be. Two different greys used as card backgrounds are one role; the same grey used as a background and as a border is two.
- 2 Define the role names once and map each role to a value per theme. A role may resolve to a light grey in one theme and a near-black in another; what must not change is which components reference it.
- 3 Stop shared components accepting raw colour values. A primitive that takes a hex string as a prop guarantees that some product screen will hardcode a colour the themes never learn about.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/semantic-color-tokens
Motion Token System
Motion Token System
Give the app one shared vocabulary of durations and easing curves instead of ad hoc numbers.
What it does
A named set of durations and easing curves, each tied to a category of motion, replacing the timing values scattered through the app's components.
How it works
- 1 Inventory every duration and easing value currently written into the app and group them by what they do: something entering, something leaving, something being emphasised, and something changing size or position.
- 2 Name a small set of durations — roughly instant, quick, standard, and deliberate — and a small set of curves, then map each motion category to a pairing. Four or five of each is enough for an entire product.
- 3 Give entrances and exits different treatment. Something arriving should decelerate into place; something leaving should accelerate away and take less time, because nobody wants to wait for a dismissal.
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No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/motion-token-system
Responsive Grid Tokens
Responsive Grid Tokens
Express columns, gaps, and spans as shared tokens rather than per-component guesses.
What it does
A token set describing column counts, gutters, and span behaviour at each breakpoint, used by every grid in the app.
How it works
- 1 Find the grids already in the app — card lists, dashboards, form layouts, media galleries — and record how many columns each uses at each size. The reconciled set is normally three or four column counts, not one per screen.
- 2 Define gutters from the spacing scale rather than inventing grid-specific values, so the gap between cards matches the rhythm of everything around them.
- 3 Express spans in tokens tied to the column count, so a component asking for half a row keeps working when the row drops from four columns to two instead of overflowing.
Copy the prompt
No account needed
Add this feature to my app:
https://addthisfeature.com/x/responsive-grid-tokens
How it works
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1
Copy the link
Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.
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Give it to your AI
Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.
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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.