The 5 Stages Every Design System Goes Through #designsystem

1 Jul 2026 · 2 min

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1:40

In this presentation Nick Kugelman outlines a five‑level maturity model for design systems. Level 1 (Ad‑hoc) consists of copy‑and‑paste components built by engineers with little shared tooling. Level 2 (Catalog) introduces a basic Figma library, some design tokens, and isolated code that is not yet in parity with design files. Level 3 (Structured) aligns Figma and code (e.g., via Code Connect), establishes a token architecture, and adds basic governance so humans ship consistently. Level 4 (Validated) adds automated rule enforcement, CI pipelines, schema‑driven documentation, and agents that can generate usable output while catching drift. Level 5 (Agentic) achieves full JSON‑schema coverage, allowing AI to produce shippable UI with minimal human review, reserving human effort for high‑priority work. The speaker notes most teams sit at Level 3, moving toward Level 4.

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We want to kind of take a look at where your system is. We have these early ad hoc systems where it might be a little copy and paste components. It doesn't sound like a whole bunch of folks are in this early phase. A lot of engineers might be building from scratch. And then we kind of have like the catalog system here. We have maybe a Figma library that exists. Components might not be super composable. We might have some variables and tokens established. Code might be a little disconnected, right? We might not be leveraging things like Code Connect or They might not be in parity, like property names might not be in parity, things like that. We might be on the structured side where Figma and code is aligned. The token architecture is in place. We've got some basic governance. Humans are shipping consistently. Then we have kind of level 4, which is the validated where rules fail, CI, it's not just reviews. We have schema-driven documentation. Agents are able to produce usable output and we and we're able to catch that drift. And the final stage is really like that full agentic where we have full JSON schema coverage. AI is providing shippable UI. Humans really reviewing the work and really maybe even as reviewing just really high priority work and not everything, you know, maybe there's lower priority work that's being shipped just automatically. Most teams kind of identify in this cataloged or structured, I'd say based on the poll that we had, everyone's probably like Level 3, maybe starting to move into Level 4. And so this is where we end up talking to a lot of teams and kind of where they are in the current process.