Colour carries depth; shadows are the exception
Standard containers never carry a shadow. Depth comes from stepping through the container colour ramp, which keeps surfaces flat, crisp, and legible against the page floor. Only surfaces that genuinely float above the page (anchored overlays, modals, and the floating App sidebar) earn a shadow, and the elevation tokens below are the only ones that exist for it. Never write a literal box-shadow value in component CSS.
Shadow tokens
Both tokens are defined per theme, with stronger opacity in dark mode so they still read against the #050505 floor.
Depth without shadows
Everything below the floating layer expresses hierarchy through background steps. Each level takes its own step on the neutral ramp, so a boundary reads from the contrast between adjacent surfaces, not from a lift. In light the containers are the bright side of that contrast, white against a soft grey floor; in dark they step up from a near-black one.
The one exception
Interactive Card and EntityCard navigation tiles lift on hover. That shadow is a deliberate navigational affordance, a signal that the whole tile is clickable, not an elevation pattern to copy onto static containers.