Dear Penpot Team,
First of all, congratulations on the amazing work you are doing with the platform and your native commitment to the W3C DTCG standard. It is an excellent solution for large teams and complex design architectures.
However, as a Freelance or Startup developer, I find that having the Tokens tab permanently fixed in such a prominent way on the left panel creates unnecessary visual noise in the day-to-day workflow. For quick or independent projects, it is often faster and more efficient to map variables directly into our own CSS code without going through the bureaucracy of configuring tokens within the design interface.
Because it is fixed in the main sidebar (alongside Layers and Pages), it gives the impression of being a mandatory step, when for many workflows it should be completely optional.
A proposal for UI improvement:
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Allow users to hide, collapse, or customize the tabs on the left panel.
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This way, teams managing massive design systems can keep Tokens in plain sight, while independent developers or startups looking for an agile workflow can hide that panel to clean up their workspace and avoid visual distractions.
I believe this would greatly help balance Penpot’s technical power with the lightweight feel sought by users migrating from other tools.
Thank you very much
