Design System Documentation in the Age of AI

Rosey the Robot from the Jetsons

As AI develops at a rapid pace, design system documentation is struggling to keep up. Documentation now serves two very different audiences: humans and machines.

Since the rise of design systems, teams have relied on documentation to explain how components, tokens, and patterns should be used. Traditionally, this documentation was written by humans, for humans. It told designers and engineers which tokens to use, how much spacing was required, and which button variant belonged in a particular context.