Jan 15, 2026

Design systems in the AI era

What changes, what stays the same and what teams should do now.

Design systems * AI * Operations

TL;DR

  • AI does not kill design systems - it punishes vague ones.
  • Spec-driven, testable systems win.
  • Tokens are becoming portable and standard.

Key claims

  • AI amplifies inconsistent systems and accelerates drift.

  • Semantic tokens are now the public API for theming.

  • Promptable docs reduce interpretation errors.

Steal this

  • Component contract checklist
  • Token layer rules
  • Promptable docs template

Next step

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