Skip to main content

​
Code is the source of truth

Titan tokens are authored as DTCG JSON. Components and their intent live in code. Style Dictionary builds from that source and emits CSS, TypeScript, this documentation — and the Figma library. Figma is an emission target, not an authority. A value that exists only in Figma is not part of the system.
This is a statement about where values live, not about who decides. Design authority over what the system should do is unchanged — see Proposing a change below. What changed is that a decision is only real once it lands in source.

​
Three kinds of disagreement

“Drift” is used for three different situations, and only one of them has a mirror. Identify which you have before reaching for a fix, because the resolutions are not the same.
Only the first is a mirror problem. The other two have no downstream side — both halves were authored by someone who meant it, so “re-emit” is not available and picking the better-looking one is not a resolution. Those get recorded and decided, not fixed in place.The largest example today: the naming specification and the shipped tokens overlap by only 54 of 244 names. See TITAN-DIV-09.

​
Code and Figma: drift has a direction

When Figma and code disagree, the question is not “which one is right?” It is “how far has the mirror drifted?” The answer is always the same:
Resolution is always re-emission. Never edit the token to match the Figma file, and never hand-fix the Figma variable to match code — a hand-fix looks like a resolution and leaves the sync broken, so the same drift returns on the next publish with no record that anyone noticed.
The instinct when two things disagree is to look at both and pick the better-looking one. That instinct is the thing this page exists to interrupt. “Figma looks more correct” is a reason to propose a change to source, not a reason to treat Figma as the answer.

​
Reporting drift

1

Identify what disagrees

Name the token, component, or variant, and both values — the code value and what Figma shows. Screenshots help a human triage, but they are not the evidence. A screenshot confirms a script ran; it does not confirm accuracy.
2

Check whether it is drift or a gap

Two different problems with different fixes:
  • Drift — the value exists in code and Figma shows something else. The mirror is stale. Re-emit.
  • Gap — the value exists in neither, and what renders has no token behind it at all. Not drift. It needs a token added to source. See Token workflow.
Gaps are the more common finding, and they are invisible without a systematic diff. An audit run this way on Titan surfaced roughly 20 discrepancies, none visible by eye.
3

File it

Include the token or component name, the code value, the Figma value, and which tier and axis it touches — primitive/semantic/component, and whether a mode is involved (light/dark, comfortable/compact).
4

Resolution is a re-emission, not an edit

The fix runs the sync. If the sync produces the wrong result, the sync is the bug.

​
Proposing a change

Reporting drift and proposing a change are different actions. Confusing them is how “code is the source of truth” gets misheard as “designers do not get a say.” A designer changing a value in Figma is not authoring. A designer deciding a value absolutely is — the decision simply has to land in source to become real, the same way an engineer’s decision does. Nobody’s judgment is downstream here. Only the file format is.

​
What not to do

Do not hand-edit generated output. Not the emitted CSS, not the TypeScript, not the files under snippets/generated/. A hand-edit does not fix anything; it creates a value that disagrees with source and survives until someone notices. Do not resolve drift with a local override. An override is invisible to the audit, to Figma, and to every other consumer. It is how a design system stops being one. Do not resolve a divergence by editing the documentation to match the code. That is the non-mirror case, and quietly rewriting the intent destroys the decision. Record it in Divergences instead. Do not treat the legacy library as evidence. The “IDS – Core Components” Figma file may be referenced for design intent — it carries real direction about how things were meant to feel — but it is not a source for values, for variant models, or for Code Connect mappings. It is history, not input.

​
The health metric

Titan tracks generated-to-merged delta: how much a human changes what the tools generate before it merges. A rising delta does not mean generation got worse. It means the mirror or the Code Connect mappings went stale — which is drift, measured before anyone reports it. That makes it the one number worth watching, and it is why documentation coverage is not the metric. A fully documented system whose mirror has drifted produces confidently wrong output.
Last modified on September 1, 2026