design systems as agent skills
Two design systems — the agency's and the client's — rebuilt as things an agent can invoke, not PDFs a human reads. Figma and code reconciled as two sources of truth.
the agency's system is described with its tokens; the client's system is described by method only — no values, keys, or component names.
Most of the fleet's tools are built by agents from specs, so “on brand” has to be something an agent can load. The agency system: eighteen preview cards (brand, color, type, spacing, motion, components), a W3C token file plus CSS, an icon set, a marketing-site UI kit, and a skill file Claude Code can invoke — assembled from a seven-page Figma file and an earlier token proof-of-concept, codifying rules like four colors and no grays, 60/30/10, radii from zero to four pixels, and one signature easing curve. Loaded once, it styles the next tool; several of the internal apps got their design pass this way.
The client system was the harder reconciliation: three Figma library files synced against tokens pulled from the production site's source — an eight-pixel base, two-theme semantic tokens where emphasis is contrast rather than a brand hue — into seventeen cards whose component cards map one-to-one to the real component library. Where Figma and code disagreed, code won for values and Figma won for intent, and the disagreements were written down. The method is the deliverable; the values stay with the client.
Full case study in progress — artifacts pending clearance or writing time. The insight below is already earned.
A design system that only lives in Figma governs designers. One that also lives as tokens, rules, and a skill file governs every tool an agent builds — which, in 2026, is most of them.
the insight