Design Systems Are Products
A component library without ownership becomes a junk drawer. Treat your design system like an internal product with a roadmap, release notes, and clear contribution rules.
Tokens First
Color, type, spacing, and motion tokens keep brand updates cheap. Components should consume tokens — not hard-coded hex values scattered across the codebase.
Accessibility by Default
Ship focus states, labels, and keyboard support in primitives. Feature teams should not re-solve a11y for every button.
Contribution Paths
Document when to extend vs invent. A light RFC process prevents one-off components from fracturing the system.