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By default every build compiles every platform, so a dev server serving a web app pays for iOS headers, Android XML and Dart classes on every token save. platforms narrows it to the names your configuration defines.
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string[] | { build?: string[]; watch?: string[] }
An array selects the same platforms for every build. The object form splits the first compile, build, from the watch rebuilds, watch. An omitted key means every platform, so { watch: ['css'] } builds all of them once and then only css.
A name the configuration does not define is an error, as in Style Dictionary’s own CLI. Any other shape, such as a single string or a serve key, throws a TypeError when the plugin is created.

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What it saves

Measured on a six-platform configuration (css, scss, js, ios, android, flutter), timing the build call alone:
Unselected platforms keep whatever they last wrote. Nothing removes or refreshes their files, so scoping the build half ships stale output for the rest. Scope watch unless that is what you want.

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Generated output is disposable

Nothing removes a generated file, ever. Drop a files entry, remove a platform or move a buildPath, and the old output stays where it was, still importable, still carrying its old values, and in a package build still published. So treat the build directory as disposable: delete it when a configuration changes shape, and keep it out of version control and away from hand-written files. Keep it out of the bundler’s own output directory too, since Vite empties build.outDir after the plugin has compiled. There is deliberately no clean option. Style Dictionary’s cleanAllPlatforms() removes the destinations the current configuration declares, which are exactly the files that are not orphans, and the buildPath directory along with them.