From Making Every Screen to Defining the Constraints
Background
Early on, I helped set up the design tokens and patterns for our new AI platform so teams could move fast from day one. Then speed and two different tech stacks did what speed does: the UI started to drift.
Soon after, the rest of my design team was laid off. Two of us were left, and PMs were being asked to prototype their own ideas, which I think is a good thing. But I couldn't review every prototype, and I noticed something: they were shipping UIs that didn't quite feel right, even though I could tell what they were going for. They didn't need critique. They needed clearer guardrails.
What I Built
An interactive reference for our app chrome. It shows how headers work, how child pages nest, and the grid and column structure, with notes for engineering. I also added sample layouts, because column rules alone weren't enough. Structure tells you where things can go, and layouts show what good looks like.
Then I turned it into a Claude skill. It carries the chrome, containers, columns, and layouts, and pulls the real design system tokens and primitives, so a prototype dropped into it fits the product without anyone memorizing the rules. The design system stays the single source of truth. The skill is how it reaches people who don't live in Figma. It's also the first time our system has been something a tool can act on, not just something people read.
Seven PMs are using it so far. One told me: "This is solid, and loads better than what we have currently, so I am in favor of moving forward with this ASAP."
It's not a flashy artifact, and that's fine with me.
What I Believe
Design systems are becoming infrastructure for agents. Components, tokens, patterns, and docs used to be written for people to read. Now they need to make sense to machines too.
I think of it as a progression: readable by people, then accessible to machines, then something machines can act on, and eventually something that can check its own work. The skill is a small step along that path.
In a corporate environment, the most useful design work right now is often the unglamorous kind: making the right path the easy path for everyone else.
