A design system that lives only in Figma is a style guide with extra steps. The systems that actually hold up over time are the ones where design tokens, components, and documentation map directly onto what engineering ships — with as little translation as possible in between.
We start by defining tokens — color, type, spacing, radius — as the single source of truth, then build both the Figma library and the production component library from those same values. When a token changes, it changes everywhere, instead of triggering a manual hunt through both codebases.
Documentation is the part teams skip, and the part that determines whether a system survives past the first redesign. Every component ships with usage guidance, states, and accessibility notes — written for the engineer who didn't sit in the original design reviews.
Finally, we treat the system as a product with an owner, not a one-time deliverable. Systems that drift back into inconsistency are almost always systems nobody was responsible for maintaining.
