Do teams actually plan UI colors from day one?

I’ve been thinking about something while building TintVibe:

Most products don’t start with a proper color system.

They start with screens.

A primary button here.
A few gray shades there.
Some success/error colors.
Maybe dark mode later.

And it works… until the product starts growing.

Then suddenly the team has to deal with:

• inconsistent buttons
• random surface colors
• weak contrast
• dark mode issues
• too many similar grays
• developers hardcoding hex values
• design tokens that don’t feel reliable

My question for designers, developers, and founders here:

Do you usually plan your color system properly from the start, or do you fix it later when the UI starts feeling messy?

I’m currently exploring this problem with TintVibe — a color workflow tool that helps move from palette → contrast → shades → brand system → design tokens.

But I’d love to hear how other teams actually handle this in real products.

Do you use a proper token system early, or does it usually happen after the product becomes harder to manage?