# Ask Flash prompts that change real tokens

> A prompt with a target and a number gets you a patch worth applying. "Make it pop" gets you one you'll throw away.

- Source: https://flashdsm.com/blog/ask-flash-prompts
- Published: 2026-09-11
- Author: Flash DSM Team
- Track: Learn Flash
- Reading time: 5 min read

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## Nothing changes until you apply

Ask Flash is the copilot inside the editor. Press {{⌘K}} on a Mac or {{Ctrl+K}} on Windows and Linux, and a dock opens with the placeholder "Ask about your tokens…". {{Esc}} closes it. It's on every plan, Free included, and AI use is metered per day.

One rule makes it safe to play with: nothing is written until you say so. Every edit comes back as a patch card listing the tokens it wants to change, old value next to new. **Apply** writes it. **Discard** drops it. After you apply, the card offers **Undo**.

- **The count.** "3 token changes" from a prompt about button corners is about right. "84 token changes" from the same prompt means it went wider than you meant.
- **The hand-edit flag.** If the patch touches tokens you set yourself, the card says so, for example "2 you edited by hand". That's usually your cue to discard and ask again more narrowly.

## Quick actions for broad strokes

Quick actions sit under the input. They don't need a prompt, and they're the fastest way to try a direction and throw it away.

| Quick action | What moves |
|---|---|
| Generate a new palette | Brand hues across primary, secondary, neutrals and surfaces |
| Shuffle font pairing | The heading and body font tokens |
| Bigger & bolder, Compact UI, Editorial | The type ramp, rescaled to that preset |
| Shuffle density | Spacing tokens |
| Shuffle corner style | Radius tokens |
| Shuffle elevation style | Shadow tokens |
| Shuffle border weight | Border tokens |
| Shuffle glass effects | Effects tokens |
| Shuffle motion feel | Motion tokens |
| Extend scale | Adds the missing base spacing steps: 2, 40, 48 and 64px |
| Directions > Surprise me | Colours, type, spacing, corners, shadows and motion together |

**Surprise me** is the big one. It moves the whole system to a new direction in one patch. Treat it as a sketch: apply it, look at Components and Modules, and undo if it isn't you. If a quick action reports that your tokens already match the preset, pick another one.

## Twelve prompts that work

Good prompts share a shape. They name a target, give a number when there is one, and say what shouldn't move. The right column is what the patch *should* touch. If it touches much more, discard it and narrow the prompt.

| Prompt | What it should touch |
|---|---|
| Make the primary colors warmer | The primary hue. The ramp is rebuilt and the aliases follow |
| Check my text contrast for accessibility | A report of text and fill pairs under 4.5:1, with the fixes as a patch |
| Add a spacing step between 16 and 24 | One new spacing token at 20px |
| Keep danger red, but less saturated in dark mode | The danger values the dark theme uses |
| Use Fraunces for headings, keep the body font | The heading font token only |
| Tighten the type scale for a dense dashboard, body stays 14px | Display and heading sizes step down, body holds |
| Line height 1.5 on body text and 1.2 on headings | Line-height values on those type tokens |
| Radius 6px on inputs and buttons, 12px on cards | The radius tokens those components reference |
| Soften the shadows and make them all fall straight down | Shadow offsets, blur and opacity |
| Make hover transitions 120ms and panel transitions 200ms | Motion duration tokens |
| Create a stat card with a label, a big number and a trend badge | A new component built from your existing tokens |
| Add a column to the pricing module | That module's structure: one more column |

The last two are structural. Ask Flash can create and edit components, and change the structure of modules (add columns, duplicate a section), not only recolour tokens. Those come back as patch cards too.

> [!TIP]
> After any colour change, run "Check my text contrast for accessibility" again. A warmer primary can drop a label on a primary button from 4.6:1 to 4.2:1 without looking any different to you.

## Prompts that don't work

Taste words fail. "Make it pop", "more modern", "cleaner" and "more premium" have no target. The model has to guess what you mean, so it guesses wide, and you get a patch that nudges fifty tokens in a direction you didn't choose. You discard it and conclude the tool has no taste. It was asked a question with no answer.

Turn the adjective into the change you would make by hand:

| Instead of | Try |
|---|---|
| Make it pop | Raise primary saturation and use it on primary buttons only |
| More modern | Radius 8px everywhere, remove card borders, use shadows for depth |
| Cleaner | Take the secondary colour out of backgrounds, add 8px of padding to cards |
| More premium | Serif for headings, darker neutrals, slow motion to 250ms |
| Make it look like our competitor | Scan their site from the import dialog, or name the three things you like |
| Fix the button in my React app | Out of scope: Ask Flash edits the system, not your repo |

Don't bundle ten requests into one prompt: one concern per prompt gives you a patch you can review in ten seconds and undo cleanly. And don't ask it to invent colours when you already have them. If the brand is on a website, [import it](/blog/import-design-system-from-website) first and use Ask Flash to adjust.

For code in your repo, point your editor's agent at the system over [MCP](/mcp) instead. That's on Pro and up.

## A working rhythm

1. Start broad. Try a quick action or **Surprise me**, apply, look, undo freely.
2. Once the direction feels right, switch to specific prompts, one concern each.
3. Re-run the contrast check after every colour change.
4. Watch the hand-edit flag on later patches. It's how you spot a broad prompt reaching into work you already finished.
5. On Team, save a version in History before a big session, so you can compare what the afternoon changed.

When you'd rather move a value yourself, [editing foundations](/blog/editing-foundations) covers the editor by hand, including why you edit a hue and not a dozen hexes.