Murphy Trueman joins me to dig into something most design system teams already know but haven't wanted to say out loud: your design system isn't ready for AI. Ambiguous tokens, undocumented rules, and a lack of parity that only works because experienced humans know how to use the system... we've been getting away with it for years. AI just made the bill come due. We discuss what it actually means to treat your design system like a semantic API, how to think about governance, and why the fixes AI demands are ones we probably should have made years ago. Plus, what it means to allow more roles (and LLMs) to build with the system, and and what teams can do right now to get their house in order.

Resources & Links

• https://murphytrueman.com/
• https://blog.murphytrueman.com/
• https://designsystemsforai.com/
• https://designsystemops.com/

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Maya draws on her experience as a design systems PM at both REI and lululemon to explore what makes ecommerce design systems distinct. From the component library decisions to supporting editorial flexibility and brand storytelling, this episode digs into the real differences between ecommerce systems and other product contexts — and what's driving non-tech companies to invest in designs systems now.

Resources & Links

• Maya Hampton on LinkedIn
• Maya's writing on Medium
• Driving design system adoption
• REI Cedar system

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There’s so much happening in the world of design systems: so much noise, so many new tools, and so much pressure. Where to start?

Building on what I wrote on the Zeroheight blog, in this minisode I’m offering tactical suggestions for cutting through the noise.

I cover the three areas you should be focusing on in your design system right now—MCPs, skills, and agents.md; how to get started designing with code; and defining design guidelines and semantic components—plus a detour into governance and ways of working.

But the bit that’s occupying my brain space right now is that I believe that design system practitioners are uniquely positioned to help organizations change how they work with AI, because we own the layer that says: this is how you build UI and how design and engineering collaborate.

Maybe the most important thing that you can be doing is thinking about how you can help your product teams think about what it means to build products today, and how we do it.

Resources

• My writing for Zeroheight:
  • AI in design systems: What’s changing in 2026
  • 3 practical ways LLMs can support design systems teams today (Oct 2025)
• Some Murphy Trueman hits:
  • The prompt you never wrote
  • Your next design system user is an agent
  • Your design system might be AI-ready. Your organisation probably isn't.
  • Your design system has opinions. They're just not being enforced
  • The AI feedback loop: When design systems train the models that critique them
  • The bidirectional design system: When code talks back to design
• Erika Flowers, Open Vector

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