Consuming a design system

You are wiring a product to a design system someone else owns: installing its token release, binding tokens into your CSS/framework layer, theming, or upgrading across a version bump. This skill orients you across that lifecycle and points at the skill that carries each station's actual rules — it does not re-teach them here.

When to use

• Installing a design system's token package into a product for the first time.
• Wiring tokens to CSS variables, Tailwind config, or framework-native theme primitives.
• Adding or changing a theme (light/dark, brand variant, density) in a product that consumes a system.
• Upgrading across a token release — reading a token-diff, mapping deprecations, choosing a bump-aware upgrade path.
• Deciding whether a product-specific need should alias existing tokens, get proposed upstream, or justify a fork.

When NOT to use

• Building, extending, or authoring a design system's own token catalog — load designing-a-design-system instead.
• Reviewing a PR or rendered UI for compliance with a system's rules — load reviewing-design-work instead.
• This skill is for the consumer side of the relationship only; it assumes the system already exists.

1. Token discipline