AI doesn't need your design system to be perfect. It needs it to be honest.
Why documenting your mess matters more than fixing it
❖ Writing about design, systems, and the organisations that build them.
Processing your application
Please check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription.
There was an error sending the email
Popular posts
Slots and the control paradox: Why loosening your design system might save it
How Figma's newest feature exposes an uncomfortable truth about the way we've been building systems
We're still terrible at the people parts
Why teams with perfect systems still build around them instead
The hidden cost of design system entropy
How AI tools surface every shortcut and inconsistency
Your next design system user is an agent
How to structure components for machine readability, semantic clarity, and long-term resilience
The AI feedback loop: When design systems train the models that critique them
AI is learning from our design systems, and quietly reshaping them in return. Here’s what that feedback loop means for consistency, drift, and control
Slots and the control paradox: Why loosening your design system might save it
How Figma's newest feature exposes an uncomfortable truth about the way we've been building systems
The bidirectional design system: When code talks back to design
How AI is shifting design systems from one-way handoffs to continuous, two-way sync – and what that means for how we build products
Your tokens have become infrastructure
How to build systems that survive scale, governance, and AI
Why design system naming feels impossible
The real problem isn't the name itself – it's the mental overhead
We're still terrible at the people parts
Why teams with perfect systems still build around them instead
Recommended
Building for coherence, not compliance
Lessons from Baldurs Gate 3 on contracts, governance, and judgment at the edges
What I stole from API documentation
Patterns from Stripe, GitHub, and Twilio that fixed my component architecture
AI doesn't need your design system to be perfect. It needs it to be honest.
Why documenting your mess matters more than fixing it