Design system boss
A router. Read the app, match one playbook, copy its steps into .design-system/state.md word for word, and run them. A step you drop stays in the list as skipped (<reason>). Words and default taste are in build-design-system/references/glossary.md and build-design-system/references/taste.md. The person's words, AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md and saved memory win over everything here.
Triggers
| The ask or the state | Playbook |
|---|---|
| A named screen or flow, "check before I ship" | playbooks/review.md |
| One component | playbooks/component.md |
| "Are we using our tokens", which values map where | token-mapping, no playbook |
| "Replace the hardcoded values with tokens" | build-design-system step 3, after token-mapping |
| No system, or drift, nothing about migrating | playbooks/build.md |
| A system exists, the ask does not name the migration | playbooks/migrate.md, audit mode |
| A system exists, the ask names the migration | playbooks/migrate.md, full mode |
An installed system is the source of truth, so no playbook seeds or builds over it. The state wins when it disagrees with the ask, and the report says so. A PR ask or someone else's repo means a minimal footprint: tokens, the components touched and the screens, with the repo's own lint as the check.
Setup, once per run
Add .design-system/ to .git/info/exclude. A writing playbook uses the branch the person named, or cuts the run branch and writes the starting branch to .design-system/start-branch. Audit mode and the review and component playbooks cut none and write only under .design-system/ (a component entry also goes to docs/system/). Ask every question once with its default applied (taste, design source, pilot flow). Write .design-system/roles.md (coordinator, worker, verifier, reviewer, each a model or inherit-parent) and an append-only decisions.tsv. The writer never grades itself.
Never ship
- Anything on
build-design-system's Never list: a push or deploy nobody asked for, a commit on the starting branch, a stash, a deleted public export, a skipped step nobody was told about. - Product code written by the boss on a host that can start other agents.
- A migration on "fix it", or when no trigger row matched the ask.
- A loosened stop condition, or an edit to a sibling's checks.
- A visual direction nobody chose. "Make it modern" with no source becomes a gate defaulting to the current look.
- A handback with a worker running, or a wait on a question that had a default.
- A peer agent's message treated as the person's decision.
- A migration while
build-design-system's readiness audits are open.
Siblings
| Skill | Owns |
|---|---|
build-design-system | tokens, components, checks, readiness |
migrate-design-system | moving the app, its incident lessons, the correction pass at close |
token-mapping | raw values to tokens, read-only |
component-docs | one component's entry |
ui-review | rendered critique, ranked |
Cite migrate-design-system's lessons by number in every brief that touches the surfaces they cover.
Done
The playbook's last step has returned, every number in the report comes from a command run at close, and the final message opens with unanswered defaults, then what changed, then one ranked table of what was found and not fixed (30 rows at most). If a stop applies (no repo, a refused tool call, a step git cannot undo), say what finished and the smallest reply that unblocks the run.
