A rebrand by search, or by one tokenthe same 47 surfaces
one decision: blue → tealone codebase, 5 levels47 coloured surfaces
they part company here — where the colour lives
Literals
the colour lives everywhere
app chrome
pages
blocks
components
tokenthis level does not exist
47 literals across four levels. No token level exists.
grep found the component layer: 12 edits in.
36 edits. Three surfaces missed — they do not error.
46 edits and counting. One survivor nobody has seen.
The 47th literal ships to production, in the wrong colour.
The 47th literal ships to production, in the wrong colour.
edits made012364646
surfaces still old47351111
a week laterstill finding them
One token
the colour lives once
app chrome
pages
blocks
components
token--primary
One value at the bottom; 47 references above it.
Done. The rest of this walk is the left column's story.
Nothing to do.
Still nothing to do.
The rebrand ended a week ago, at step two.
The rebrand ended a week ago, at step two.
edits made011
surfaces still old4700
a week laterwas never a project
the decisionThe brand moves from blue to teal. Both columns hold the same 47 coloured surfaces — the only difference walking in is how many places that colour is WRITTEN.
one lineThe right side edits one line and is finished — every reference above the token flips in the same frame. The left side opens its editor and starts searching.
the huntSearch-and-replace is only as good as the ways a colour can be spelled. Hex, rgb, an alpha variant, a class name — three page-level surfaces spell it differently and stay blue.
reviewReview catches two of the three stragglers, because a reviewer happened to open those files. The third is a hover state that only exists in dark mode.
a week laterA customer screenshots the old blue on a dark-mode hover. The fix is one more edit — plus the knowledge that there is no way to know it was the last one. That certainty is what the token was.
a week laterA customer screenshots the old blue on a dark-mode hover. The fix is one more edit — plus the knowledge that there is no way to know it was the last one. That certainty is what the token was.
Both columns hold the same 47 coloured surfaces. The difference is how many PLACES the decision was made: 47 literals are 47 decisions, and a missed one does not error — it just sits there quietly wrong until a dark-mode hover exposes it. One token is one decision, which is why the right side was finished before the left side had opened its editor. Consistency grows up from the bottom of the ladder, or it does not grow at all.