hexsweep

Find the hardcoded colors that should be design tokens. After a token migration, components still have raw background: #3f82f0 buried in them instead of var(--primary-blue) — and you don't find out until dark mode or a rebrand breaks. hexsweep scans your source and flags every raw color literal that escaped, with zero config and zero dependencies.

pipx run hexsweep src/
#   src/components/Button.tsx  (2)
#     14:18  #3f82f0  [hex6]  background
#     27:10  rgb(255, 0, 0)  [rgb]  color
#
#   ✖ 2 hardcoded colors in 1 file (23 files clean)

Exits non-zero when it finds colors, so it drops straight into CI. Pure standard library. Also on npm (npx hexsweep) — the two builds produce byte-for-byte identical output.

Why not grep or stylelint?

grep '#[0-9a-f]{6}' is what people fall back to, and it's noisy: it hits #header id-selectors, url(#gradient) references, colors in comments, and it can't see rgb()/hsl(), 3/4/8-digit hex, or tell a leftover from a token definition.

stylelint can do it, but needs Node + a config + postcss/custom-syntax, it can't see hex inside TSX/CSS-in-JS string literals, and — critically — its color-no-hex flags your tokens.css (the one file that's supposed to hold raw colors) exactly as loudly as a stray hex in a component. The request to exempt token definitions has sat unimplemented for years.

hexsweep sits in between. It's a one-shot, zero-config scanner that is:

• comment-aware — colors in //, /* */, <!-- --> are skipped (but strings are kept, so it does catch CSS-in-JS like styled.div`color:#3f82f0`);
• definition-aware — --primary: #3f82f0, $brand: …, @brand: … are allowed by default; only usages are flagged (use --strict to flag definitions too);
• structural — #fff { id-selectors and url(#a1b2c3) are not colors;
• precise — matches hex (3/4/6/8) + rgb()/rgba()/hsl()/hsla(), never a 5- or 7-digit run, with an --allow list for the colors you keep on purpose.

Usage

hexsweep                          # scan the current directory
hexsweep src/ styles/             # scan specific paths
hexsweep --allow "#000,#fff" src  # allowlist colors that are OK to hardcode
hexsweep --strict                 # also flag token definitions (--x/$x/@x)
hexsweep --ext css,scss,vue       # override the scanned extensions
hexsweep --json                   # machine output (byte-identical both builds)

node_modules, .git, dist, build, coverage (and more) are skipped by default; add others with --exclude. The default extensions are css, scss, sass, less, vue, svelte, jsx, tsx, js, ts, html, htm, astro.

Exit codes: 0 clean · 1 hardcoded colors found · 2 error.

In CI

- run: pipx run hexsweep src/   # fails the build on a hardcoded color

The --json shape is sorted by (file, line, column) so it's deterministic regardless of filesystem order:

{
  "version": 1,
  "summary": { "filesScanned": 24, "filesWithFindings": 1, "findingCount": 2 },
  "findings": [
    { "file": "src/components/Button.tsx", "line": 14, "column": 18,
      "literal": "#3f82f0", "category": "hex6", "property": "background", "isDefinition": false }
  ]
}

How it works

It's a line scanner, not a CSS/JS parser — that's what keeps it zero-dependency and lets the Node and Python builds stay byte-identical. It blanks comment spans (keeping string contents and every column position intact), then matches color literals with explicit-ASCII regexes, and applies the id-selector / url() / definition / allowlist gates. Columns are counted in UTF-8 bytes and files are visited in a fixed byte-sorted order, so output never depends on the OS or filesystem.

Scope

MVP matches #hex and rgb()/hsl() functional notation. Named colors (red), modern oklch()/lab(), autofix, and a config file are intentionally left out — the goal is a high-signal, zero-config CI gate, not a parser.

Install

pip install hexsweep  # or pipx run hexsweep
npm i -g hexsweep     # Node build, identical behaviour

Python ≥ 3.8 or Node ≥ 18. No dependencies.

License

MIT