Magnesium

Introduction

Sass toolkit for managing design tokens as CSS custom properties. The model is define → emit → consume: declare tokens as plain Sass maps, emit them as scoped, prefixed custom properties, then reference them in your rules.

This README is a quick overview, the full guides and API reference live at magnesium.dev.

Why not plain custom properties?

Writing --button-text-color: darkcyan by hand works right up until the token set grows. Magnesium adds three things on top of it:

• A typo becomes a build error. theme() checks every token against a reference schema, so a misspelled key stops the compilation instead of quietly emitting a property that nothing ever reads.
• One source of truth. The same Sass map produces the declarations, the var() references and their fallbacks, so the side that defines a token and the side that consumes it cannot drift apart.
• One prefix to change. Every custom property is namespaced through $prefix, so renaming it is a single line rather than a find-and-replace across the codebase.

Magnesium ships no theme, no components and no reset — only the plumbing to declare tokens and read them back.

Requirements

| Dependency | Version | |------------|-------------| | Node.js | >= 20 | | Sass | >= 1.97.1 |

Installing

npm install @magnesium/theme

Playground

Try it live on StackBlitz:

Or run it locally:

npm run dev

Usage

Configure the prefix once, at your compilation entry point, then define, emit and consume tokens:

@use "@magnesium/theme" with ($prefix: "ds");

// 1. Define — plain Sass maps, no output.
$tokens: ("text-color": darkcyan);

// 2. Emit — declare them as custom properties.
:root {
    @include theme.emit($tokens, "button"); // --ds-button-text-color: darkcyan;
}

// 3. Consume — reference them in your rules.
.button {
    color: theme.variable($tokens, "text-color", "button"); // var(--ds-button-text-color)
}

Emit and consume derive the custom property name from the same $prefix and $namespace, so the two sides cannot drift apart.

Options

| Option | Description | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | $prefix | Global prefix for all custom properties. Set to false to disable. Default: mg. |

Configure $prefix once. Setting it in multiple files causes a Sass error. With the pkg: importer, use @use "pkg:@magnesium/theme".

API

The split follows the model: mixins emit CSS, functions return values.

Define

Tokens are plain Sass maps — there is no API to learn. Nest them freely, nested maps are flattened on emit. One function guards the shape:

| Function | Description | |------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | validation($refs, $tokens) | Validates tokens against a reference schema; throws @error on unknown keys. |

Emit

| Mixin | Description | |-----------------------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | emit($tokens, $namespace, $include, $exclude, $layer) | Emits CSS custom property declarations. Filter keys with $include / $exclude, wrap in @layer via $layer. | | theme($refs, $tokens, $namespace, $include, $exclude, $layer) | validation() then emit() in one call. Throws @error on unknown tokens. | | scheme($scheme, $selector, $layer) | Scopes @content to a color scheme via @media (prefers-color-scheme), or an explicit $selector. |

Consume

| Function | Description | |----------------------------------------------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | variable($tokens, $token, $namespace, $fallback) | Returns a var() reference for a single token. Throws @error if the token is missing from the map. | | ref($token) | Returns a var() reference from a token name alone, without hardcoding the prefix. | | refs($tokens, $namespace) | Transforms a tokens map into var() references with fallbacks. Pass the result to emit() to alias it. | | name($name...) | Builds the hyphenated, prefixed name. Shared by everything above, which keeps emit and consume in sync. |

See magnesium.dev for parameters and examples.

Migration from v4

The v4 API is deprecated and will be removed in v6. Import the compatibility layer to keep it working while you migrate — each deprecated call emits a @warn:

@use "@magnesium/theme/compat" as theme;

| v4 | v5 | |---------------------------------------------------|------------------------------------------------| | config($prefix: "ds") | @use "@magnesium/theme" with ($prefix: "ds") | | create-name("button", "color") | name("button", "color") | | create-theme-vars($tokens, "button") | refs($tokens, "button") | | emit-variable($tokens, "token", true, "button") | variable($tokens, "token", "button", true) | | emit-custom-props($tokens, "button") | emit($tokens, "button") | | emit-theme-vars($refs) | emit($tokens, "button") | | emit-color-scheme("dark") | scheme("dark") |

emit-theme-vars() re-emitted the values carried by a create-theme-vars() map, so it maps back to the raw tokens. Passing a refs() map to emit() is a different operation — it declares aliases pointing at another layer.

See the full migration guide for before/after examples.