Tag · 29 guides

Design Systems

Every guide tagged design-systems, sorted by most recent.

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Codex Skills vs Plugins: What Designers Actually Need

Skills teach Codex how to run your workflow. Plugins connect Codex to tools and package reusable setups. Here is the practical designer version, with examples for design QA, docs, inbox triage, and design-system audits.

beginner·15 minSign up to read

Set Up Codex for Designers

OpenAI Codex is a coding agent you can use from the app, terminal, IDE, cloud, and mobile. This designer-friendly setup guide shows what to install, what to connect, and the first safe tasks to run.

beginner·20 minSign up to read
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Building the Agentic Operating Model (Part 5)

Part 5 and the capstone of the Agentic Design Systems series. Tools and loops are not an operating model. This is how the people, the process, and the governance fit together so a team of humans and a fleet of agents can run a design system sustainably, without the whole thing depending on the one person who understands the agents.

advanced·25 minSign up to read
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The Self-Healing Flywheel (Part 4)

Part 4 of the Agentic Design Systems series. When an agent has earned the right to fix things, the detect-propose-verify-merge-learn loop lets your design system repair its own drift while you sleep. Here is the loop, the four guardrails that keep it safe, and the moment you should switch it off.

advanced·20 minSign up to read
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Observer Mode: Learning Before Acting (Part 3)

Part 3 of the Agentic Design Systems series. Observer is the longest, cheapest, most-skipped trust level. Run an agent read-only against your real system for weeks before you give it any authority, and let the audit decide whether it should ever be promoted at all.

advanced·20 minSign up to read
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5 GitHub Actions Every Designer Should Automate

You do not need to become a DevOps person. Five small workflows that catch broken tokens, build your docs site, lint your code, and turn random scripts into one-click tools.

beginner·30 minSign up to read
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Advanced Claude Code for Designers (Module 7)

The Power User module. Ten lessons that take you from basic Claude Code use to a fully orchestrated design-system workflow: CLAUDE.md, workspace organization, skills, parallelization, auto research, browser automation, security, context management, cloud sessions, and diversification.

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CLAUDE.md: Teaching Claude Your Design System

The single highest-leverage file in your repo. Compress your design system into a CLAUDE.md so Claude Code stops hallucinating tokens, inventing components, and forgetting your conventions every session. Includes a fill-in template and a before/after that you can run yourself.

intermediate·30 minSign up to read
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Trust Levels: How Agents Earn Autonomy (Part 2)

Part 2 of the Agentic Design Systems series. The five trust levels (Observer, Advisor, Junior, Senior, Autonomous), what each one is allowed to do, and the exact criteria to promote an agent from one level to the next.

advanced·15 minSign up to read
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The Taste Stack: Project Rules, Local Markdown, and Skills

Why AI-generated websites look the same, and how to fix it with a three-layer system that teaches your AI tool your visual standards, motion language, and copy tone.

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What Is an Agentic Design System? (Part 1)

Part 1 of the Agentic Design Systems series, based on Romina's IDS 2026 talk. A design system built for AI agents, not just humans. Stops hallucination before it ships.

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Audit a Design System in 30 Minutes

A step-by-step workflow to audit any design system using AI tools. Check token naming, component health, accessibility, and visual consistency in one session.

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Claude Skills vs Cowork: What's the Difference?

Skills teach Claude how to do design work. Cowork runs Claude on more work at once. Here's when to reach for each, with five copy-paste skills designers actually use.

intermediateSign up to read

Design Token Naming: 7 Systems Compared

How Polaris, Carbon, Primer, Material Design, Lightning, Spectrum, and Fluent name their tokens. Side-by-side comparison with patterns, examples, and what to steal for your system.

intermediateSign up to read
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Automate Browser Testing Without Writing Code

Screenshot your whole design system, catch visual bugs before they ship, and audit every page automatically, using Playwright without touching a test file.

intermediateSign up to read
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Audit 500 Components in 10 Minutes

A complete workflow for auditing your entire Figma component library using Tidy and Claude. Identifies naming issues, missing descriptions, and inconsistencies.

beginner·10 minSign up to read
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Build Your Design Team's Operating System in a Repo

Your team's operating knowledge (how you name tokens, review work, and decide what good is) lives in people's heads. Put it in a repo of skills and playbooks and your least AI-fluent teammate works like your best one, while agents execute against the same source. This guide builds it, with the maturity ladder and review model that keep it honest.

advanced·25 minSign up to read
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Five Patterns for Agentic UI

An agent inside your product creates states you do not control: variable steps, variable output, and actions with real consequences taken on a user's behalf. Five patterns keep that surface trustworthy: deterministic confirmation gates, reasoning states, canonicals, intent-first navigation, and recovery.

intermediate·20 minSign up to read

Your Tokens Are a Prompt: Semantic Naming for AI UI Builders

When an AI builds your interface, the token name is the instruction. Why visual names like color.blue.500 make models guess, and how intent-based names make generation predictable.

intermediate·15 minSign up to read
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Codex Subagents for Design Review

Use Codex subagents to run accessibility, first-time user, copy, edge-state, and design-system reviews in parallel, then merge the findings into one prioritized report.

advanced·30 minSign up to read
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Browser Automation for Design QA

Delegate the mechanical parts of design QA to an AI agent that drives a real browser. Token usage, contrast, dark mode, responsive, and focus state checks that run on every PR without you clicking through every page.

intermediateSign up to read
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Extended Thinking as a Design System Debugger

Anthropic markets it as a reasoning feature. I use it as a debugger. When Claude misnames a token or mislabels a component, the scratchpad tells you exactly why.

advancedSign up to read
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Few-Shot Examples for Component Naming

How I label 20 component names by hand and get Claude to pattern-match the rest. Practical setup for component naming, token naming, and any classification task.

intermediateSign up to read
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How to Prompt Claude to Audit a Figma Design

A 5-version walkthrough showing how a bare prompt becomes a production-ready design audit. Built on the same iterative method Anthropic teaches internally.

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Automate the Boring Parts of Your Design System

Most design system problems are not caused by lack of intention. They are caused by inconsistent execution. GitHub Actions fix that by running the boring parts every single time.

beginner·30 minSign up to read
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How to Use GitHub Actions With AI

AI is good at generation. GitHub Actions are good at repeatable execution. Pair them and you get the reliability layer most AI-assisted design workflows are missing.

advanced·30 minSign up to read
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Build a Component Audit Skill for Claude Code

A Claude Code skill that audits every component in your library. Checks docs, props, accessibility, and token usage in one slash command.

intermediateSign up to read
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Build a Token Naming Audit Skill for Claude Code

A reusable Claude Code skill that checks every token in your design system against your naming convention. One slash command, instant audit.

intermediateSign up to read
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Build a Token Parity Check Skill for Claude Code

A Claude Code skill that compares your tokens between Figma and code. Catches drift before it ships, with one slash command.

intermediateSign up to read

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