FM-038 — Workspace Theme Defaults Ignored — Inherit Flag

Field	Value
Severity	SEV-3 (theme drift, admin confusion)
Category	Frontend / Theming
Date	2026-04-16
Status	Archived

Symptom

Admins save brand/theme role changes but active theme preview and downstream UI keep showing old colors. “Theme roles” values differ from “Active theme”.

Root cause

Theme resolution in use-workspace-theme.ts used userThemePref ?? orgThemeDefaults ?? null. When a user had an org-scoped theme object with useWorkspaceTheme: true (inherit mode), that object still won due to nullish precedence, so updated org defaults were ignored.

Fix

Added explicit resolver resolveWorkspaceThemeConfig():

• If personal workspace → null
• If userThemePref.useWorkspaceTheme === false → use user override
• Else prefer orgThemeDefaults, falling back to userThemePref

Prevention

• Any resolver handling “inherit default” flags must branch on the flag before fallback precedence
• Do not rely on ?? chains when objects can exist in an “inherit” state