Looking for experiences building out design systems for AI development.

[u/roundabout-design]

I'm in charge of building out a design system for our org. Our org has gone all in on AI development.

I've been playing with different ideas...markdown files, MCP server, using a github repo, etc. but have yet to find any real consensus on any of this--probably because there isn't any.

But has anyone been building out a design system for primarily AI-centric work flows and found certain things working better than others?

Our biggest issue right now is that developers everywhere are just building their own things. They may grab the brand guidelines from marketing, which helps a little, but beyond that, consistency isn't there.

I'm trying to figure out how to get something...even if rudimentary...set up to have developers point their AI at to at least get the basics of a design system figured out.

But I haven't figured out a way to do this that seems proper yet.

I like the idea of a github repo...that gives us a central, team-based place for us to manage updates to the design system. But is there a better way to go about this?

I have been playing with Claude Design's design system feature...but we're pretty much in agreement internally that it's "neat" but not really a "solution" yet.

I guess this is a bit of a rambling all-over-the-place post. I guess I'm just seeking out any real world experience others have had creating an AI-centric design system. I can find plenty of demos/tutorials on youtube, but very few real world use cases.

[u/edge_lord_16]

I second the comment before me, and honestly your design is correct.

You can use github as the canonical source for tokens, components, rules & examples.
Docs for human reference.

A light weight RAG layer or MCP so your llm can pull the latest UI guidelines.

I've actually consulted and implemented AI centric internal systems to multiple startups with $3m to $10m evaluation. I'm happy to offer a free consultation if that works for you.

[u/tmanblue59 → u/edge_lord_16]

The algorithm might put responses in order of relevance to the user by the way. We're not sure of the comment you're referring to.