Design Systems That Actually Scale

## Why design systems stall

A design system is not a component library. It is an agreement between designers and engineers, and agreements need maintenance.

### Start smaller than feels comfortable

The systems that survive begin with tokens and four or five primitives: button, input, text, stack, and card. Everything else can wait until a real pattern repeats three times.

### Name things after intent, not appearance

`color-danger` outlives `color-red`. `space-md` outlives `space-16`. Intent-based names let you rethemed the whole product without touching a single component.

### Make the easy path the correct path

If using the system is slower than writing custom CSS, people will write custom CSS. Invest in documentation, copyable examples, and sensible defaults.

### Version and communicate changes

Breaking changes are fine. Surprising breaking changes are not. Treat your system like the internal product it is, complete with a changelog.

A good system feels less like a rulebook and more like a set of sharp tools that happen to match.