Adoption Tiers

There are no formal tiers in the spec itself. The practical adoption path looks like this:

Tier 1: Drop-In Consumption

Read a xtyle definition, apply CSS variables. Five minutes.

npx xtyle-css brand.xtyle.json -o tokens.css

Link the output CSS, use the custom properties in your styles. Done.

Tier 2: Full Theme Binding

Consume the cascade, support overrides, render verbal tokens. An afternoon.

At this tier, you resolve the inheritance chain — a child definition inherits from its parent, overrides what it needs, and your application gets a fully-resolved set of tokens. You also start consuming verbal tokens: pulling taglines, jargon, and copy fragments into your templates.

Tier 3: Bidirectional Participation

Report what tokens you use, contribute to exterior gradus derivation. A few days.

At this tier, your application doesn’t just consume xtyle definitions — it reports back what tokens it actually uses, enabling tooling to identify dead tokens, suggest cascading improvements, and support bottom-up parent derivation.

---

The ramp is intentionally shallow. Most consumers never get past tier one, and that’s fine. The value compounds for those who go deeper, but the floor is low enough that adoption doesn’t require a committee meeting.