Let’s build a shared and open visual language for AI design. 🤝
Check out the open-source spec, try out the CLI, and let us know your thoughts on the new Components workflow!
🐙 GitHub Repo: https://t.co/qpqGcm7bU6
📰 Read more on The Keyword: https://t.co/LymOqg4Cw4
Today, we’re open-sourcing the draft specification for DESIGN.md, so it can be used across any tool or platform. We’re also adding new capabilities.
DESIGN.md lets you easily export and import your design rules from project to project. Instead of guessing intent, agents know exactly what a color is for and can even validate their choices against WCAG accessibility rules.
Watch David East break down this shared visual language in action👇. New capabilities and links in 🧵
Structure. Rules. Skills.
Structured context. MCP servers.
Connecting the brain to the arms.
Automating. Scaling.
That’s what I’m coding lately.
The design system as AI Infrastructure.
Every single day.
Feel like we’re finally building a living + breathing design system. ✨
When I joined Atlassian 7 years ago, I left my role as a design engineer.
I stopped coding.
I had an entire fleet of amazing devs that could code better.
I embraced building new skills in system thinking + strategy + leadership.
In the back of my mind, I always missed coding.
The familiar flow state feeling of coding.
Being in the zone. Feeling productive.
Bringing ideas to life again. 🌝✨
But this time is not just coding components, tokens, styles.
It’s codifying all the things I learned over the years.
It’s like we’re really elevating the cultural and operational infrastructure of a design system.
Using new paradigms to elevate those very difficult parts of scaling a system. Governance. Contribution.
Making it a better maker experience to contribute and evolve the system.
Coding the infrastructure.
Automating the boundaries + governance of a conceptual model.
Codifying the underlying invisible parts.
The parts that I always asked myself:
How do I multiply my thinking to others?
How do I help them see what I see?
As I increase my AI literacy and speed up my personal workflows, I find myself both very satisfied but also aware that I need to protect my boundaries even more to prevent myself from overworking. Need to pace myself. 🥲
Sometimes we design our #designsystem guides in Figma, so I gave Cursor the Figma frame for a new Getting Started page... it generated all of the code in minutes. Then prompted Cursor to add alt text + links + images. Done!✔️
Didn't write one line of code.
This is the way. 🌚✨
That's an incorrect framing of the problem. With design systems features, we have to plan them years in advance. Things like components, variables, and styles are used on the order of billions - one wrong move will result in breaking files and ruining critical design work. We have to be methodical.
With Slots, we knew we needed a more performant engine under the hood. On the web, you're only viewing one page at a time. In Figma, you may be viewing 100 variations of that same web page - Figma inherently has to be more performant with the scale people use it at. We knew there would be files out there were more than half of the content on the page would be in a slot, which is why we worked hard on a full revamp of our layout system.
We also knew it would be a component property, so we expanded out the pattern of component properties so the mental model would work for slots. Only once those building blocks were in place could we begin implementing it.
With DS features, I'm usually planning them around 3 years in advance. The first year is dreaming them, and what the requirements might be. The second year is implementing the foundations and requirements. The third year is building it out and beta testing. Things you saw that launched today were also part of that second year scope - expansions to the surface of the variables modal and its full screen presence will give us the capability to do so much more there in future years. This is how we keep the product reliable with these deeply complex features.
I can't tell you how excited I am about Slots being announced today. The team did an amazing job and they are a delight to use.
Slots has been on my mind for years. Here's a peek at some of my earliest designs from 2022! Crazy how far we've come.
At Schema by @Figma, we announced the Design Systems Remodel — a foundational rewrite of Figma’s design systems architecture that makes editing in large files up to 60% faster.
Today, at #Schema2025, I announced the first stable version of the @DesignTokens Specification — massive thanks to the amazing community of design system experts who made this happen ❤️
https://t.co/C9cZ5iEHDp