AddThisFeature

Unused Token Detection

Find the design tokens nothing references any more, before they harden into permanent debt.

moderate Developer Experience

What it adds

A report of every theme and design token in the codebase alongside where, or whether, it is still referenced.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Find the files that define the app's tokens — colours, spacing, radii, type steps, shadows, motion durations — and treat that set as the authoritative list to check against.

  2. 2

    Resolve every reference the codebase makes, in stylesheets, component source, inline styles, and any theme configuration, and record the count and the locations against each token.

  3. 3

    Report three distinct outcomes rather than one: referenced, referenced only by other tokens, and referenced by nothing at all. The middle case is the one people delete by mistake.

  4. 4

    Make the report a repeatable check that can be run on demand and read in a diff, not a one-off list pasted into an issue that is stale within a week.

  5. 5

    Do not delete anything as part of this feature. Detection and removal are separate acts, and an automatic sweep that removes a token a customer theme still sets will break that theme silently.

Edge cases it handles

6
  • Tokens assembled at runtime — a name built from a variant string, a colour picked by lookup from a data value — will look unused to any scan that only matches literal text. Detect the patterns that build names dynamically and mark everything they could reach as uncertain rather than unused.
  • A token that is deliberately deprecated but still shipped for compatibility is not the same as a token nobody ever used. Carry the deprecation status through to the report so the two are never merged into a single number.
  • Aliases must be traced to the end of the chain before any judgement is made. A base token referenced only by an alias that is itself referenced by a live component is in active use, and reporting it as dead is the most common way this check causes an outage.
  • The scan must cover every theme, every brand, and every package in the repository. A token that is unused in the default theme and load-bearing in the dark or high-contrast one is used.
  • Tokens consumed by consumers outside this repository — an embed, a published package, a documented customer theming surface — cannot be judged from this codebase alone and must be flagged as externally visible.
  • Tokens referenced only by tests, stories, or documentation fixtures should be reported separately, since that is evidence of abandonment rather than of use.

Definition of done

8
  • Every token defined in the app appears in the report with its reference count and locations.
  • Alias chains are resolved to their end before a token is classified.
  • Deprecated, unused, and dynamically referenced tokens are three separate categories in the output.
  • The scan covers all themes and all packages, not only the default theme.
  • The check can be re-run on demand and produces a stable, diffable result.
  • No token is removed by the feature itself.
  • 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.