Semantic Timing and Motion Tokens (CEM) — Canonical Spec

Status: Canonical (v1.0)

Last updated: August 10, 2026

Audience: Design Systems, Product Design, Front-End Engineering

Applies to: UI animation timing (durations and easing curves)

Companion specs:

• D0. Color (Emotional Palette) (cem-colors.md) — color transition timing
• D1. Space & Rhythm (cem-dimension.md) — spacing animation timing
• D2. Coupling & Compactness (cem-coupling.md) — density transition timing
• D3. Shape — Bend (cem-shape.md) — bend/morph animation timing
• D4. Layering (cem-layering.md) — lift/drop transitions, reduced-motion behavior
• D5. Stroke & Separation (cem-stroke.md) — focus/selection transition timing

1. Purpose and scope

This spec defines the CEM contract surface for motion timing:

• Duration tokens (how long a change takes)
• Easing tokens (how the motion accelerates/decelerates) The goal is to make motion choices intent-driven (what the user experiences), while allowing implementations/adapters (e.g., Material, custom, platform-native) to supply exact numeric curves/physics.

2. Taxonomy placement

• D7. Timing & Motion (this spec)
  • time durations
  • easing curves

Related dimensions:

• D4. Layering & Elevation: overlays/dialogs often use longer durations
• D2. Coupling & Compactness: compact density should not force overly fast or illegible motion
• D5. Stroke & Separation: focus/selection indicators may animate; duration must not impede operability

3. Consumer vocabulary

CEM duration names reflect how users perceive timing:

• instant — “blink; do not interrupt”
• noticeable — “registerable, but not slow”
• lingering — “large change; allow the user to track it”
• continuous-cycle — “steady repeated status motion; not a one-shot response”

Easing names reflect intent:

• smooth — everyday, unobtrusive
• highlighted — draws attention (more pronounced)
• uniform — neutral/mechanical (constant speed)
• classic — legacy compatibility

4. Canonical token surface

4.1 Duration tokens (required)

cem-timing-durations

Normative rules:

• Ordering MUST remain: instant < noticeable < lingering.
• Reduced-motion modes may shorten durations (including to 0ms), but MUST preserve relative ordering.
• pending-cycle is a dedicated two-second continuous status cycle, with uniform easing. Hover and focus must not restart it; clearing busy stops it. Reduced motion stops repetition and preserves the static gradient.
• continuous-cycle is outside the one-shot ordering scale. A component that repeats it automatically MUST stop the repetition under prefers-reduced-motion: reduce rather than shortening the cycle.

4.2 Easing tokens (required)

Easing tokens are expressed as CSS timing functions. R-D7-1 resolved: highlighted curves now use Material 3 "Emphasized" cubic-beziers — visibly more deliberate than smooth. Adapters SHOULD replace these with platform-appropriate emphasized curves.

cem-timing-easings

Normative rules:

• smooth MUST be suitable as the default.
• highlighted* MUST be visibly more pronounced than the corresponding smooth* curves in the same implementation. The defaults use M3 Emphasized curves; adapters SHOULD provide platform-appropriate equivalents.

4.3 Spring motion (adapter-local, not canonical tokens)

R-D7-2 is resolved by not defining or reserving canonical --cem-spring-* custom properties in v1.

Reason:

• Spring rendering is implementation-specific across WAAPI polyfills, native toolkits, and framework animation engines.
• CSS custom properties do not provide a portable spring value syntax equivalent to stiffness, damping, and mass.
• Reserved names with placeholder values create false API surface and would violate the manifest rule that emitted tokens must have concrete values.

Adapter guidance:

• Products may define adapter-local spring presets in their platform layer.
• Adapter-local springs SHOULD map back to CEM timing intent (instant | noticeable | lingering) and easing intent (smooth | highlighted) in their documentation.
• If a future CEM version adds canonical spring tokens, it must introduce a concrete value encoding and manifest table.

Normative rules (if springs are implemented):

• instant | noticeable | lingering MUST preserve perceived ordering from fastest to slowest.
• delight MAY overshoot/bounce; functional SHOULD minimize overshoot.

4.4 Reduced-motion overrides

When prefers-reduced-motion: reduce is active, duration tokens are overridden to dramatically shorter values while preserving their relative ordering (instant < noticeable < lingering). Alias tokens (--cem-duration-action, --cem-duration-overlay) inherit automatically via var() and need no explicit override. Easing tokens are unaffected. --cem-duration-continuous-cycle is intentionally not shortened: consumers must remove automatic repetition and retain a static status graphic under reduced motion.

cem-timing-reduced-motion

5. Usage guidance

• Use instant for micro-interactions that must not interrupt flow (e.g., tiny state toggles).
• Use noticeable for most component transitions (expand/collapse, standard page UI changes).
• Use lingering for overlays and large spatial changes where users must track context.
• Use continuous-cycle only for repeated status motion. Always pair it with an explicit reduced-motion rule that stops the repetition without hiding the status.

Easing selection:

• Use smooth for default transitions.
• Use start-smooth for entrances; end-smooth for dismissals.
• Use highlighted variants when motion’s purpose is to direct attention.
• Use uniform for mechanical/neutral motion (e.g., indeterminate progress).
• Use classic only for legacy compatibility.

6. Governance and versioning

Treat D7 tokens as contract-level once canonical.

Breaking (MAJOR):

• Renaming/removing a required token
• Changing the semantic meaning of a token
• Violating the ordering rule (instant < noticeable < lingering)

Non-breaking (MINOR/PATCH):

• Adjusting numeric values while preserving semantics and ordering
• Adding optional aliases or a future concrete spring token family with a real value encoding
• Documentation clarifications

7. Token manifest index

Token tier is encoded in the tier column of each source table. The manifest validator derives expected token names from these tables using the same XPath pattern as cem-timing.html.

Reduced-motion overrides (cem-timing-reduced-motion) produce no new token names — they override core duration tokens within @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce). Spring tokens (--cem-spring-*) are intentionally absent from the v1 manifest and default CSS output; spring motion is adapter-local until CEM defines a portable concrete encoding.