Design System Management

Create and maintain design systems with W3C Design Tokens (DTCG), component catalogs, and multi-theme configurations.

Default (No Arguments)

If invoked without arguments, use AskUserQuestion to present available operations:

Operation	Description
create	Initialize design system — scaffold tokens, catalog, themes
update	Add or modify tokens, components, or themes
sync	Sync tokens from Figma variables (requires Figma MCP)
validate	Check W3C DTCG compliance and detect issues
export	Convert tokens.json to target format (CSS vars, Tailwind, etc.)
discover	Scan codebase for existing design patterns → suggest tokens

Present as options via AskUserQuestion with header "Design System", question "What would you like to do?".

Prerequisites

MANDATORY: Activate ui-ux-pro-max skill FIRST for actions: create, update, discover. This provides palette, typography, and style intelligence for design decisions.

Activation: Skill(skill: "ui-ux-pro-max")

Routing

Parse $ARGUMENTS first word:

Action	Activate ui-ux-pro-max	Load Reference	Workflow
create	Yes	All 3 references	Interactive discovery → scaffold docs/design-system/
update	Yes	references/token-schema.md	Read existing tokens → modify → validate → write
sync	No	references/token-schema.md	Check Figma MCP → get_variable_defs → merge tokens.json
validate	No	references/token-schema.md	Run scripts/validate-tokens.py → report results
export	No	references/token-schema.md	Run scripts/export-tokens.py → output converted tokens
discover	Yes	references/component-catalog.md + references/token-schema.md	Scan codebase → suggest tokens + components
empty	—	—	AskUserQuestion (see Default)

Subcommands

Subcommand	Reference	Purpose
Token schema & validation	references/token-schema.md	W3C DTCG spec, types, naming, validation rules
Component catalog	references/component-catalog.md	Lightweight catalog template and discovery
Theme configuration	references/theme-config.md	Multi-theme structure (base + light/dark overrides)

Output Structure

All output files go to docs/design-system/:

docs/design-system/
├── design-principles.md     # Visual principles, do's/don'ts, rationale (prose)
├── tokens.json              # W3C DTCG source of truth (base tokens)
├── component-catalog.md     # Component inventory (name, description, status, path)
└── themes/
    ├── light.json           # Light theme token overrides
    └── dark.json            # Dark theme token overrides

Create Workflow

1. Activate ui-ux-pro-max
2. Ask user about project type, brand colors, typography preferences via AskUserQuestion
3. Use ui-ux-pro-max intelligence to recommend palette, font pairings, spacing scale
4. Scaffold docs/design-system/ directory
5. Write tokens.json with base tokens (color, dimension, fontFamily, fontWeight, shadow)
6. Write themes/light.json and themes/dark.json with semantic overrides
7. Run discover to scan codebase → populate component-catalog.md
8. Run validate to confirm schema compliance

Figma Sync (Optional)

For sync action — requires Figma MCP plugin:

1. Check if Figma MCP is available (test with get_variable_defs)
2. If available: extract variables → map to W3C DTCG types → merge into tokens.json
3. If unavailable: notify user, suggest manual token definition via create or update
4. Never block on Figma — all actions work without it

Validation & Security

Load references/token-schema.md for full rules. Key checks:

• Schema: Required fields per token type ($type, $value)
• Naming: kebab-case, dot-separated groups (color.primary.500)
• Security: Reject values containing url(), expression(), @import, <script>, javascript:
• Consistency: Same keys must exist across base and all theme files
• Duplicates: No duplicate token names within same group

Export

Read tokens.json → convert to requested format:

Target	Output
CSS Custom Properties	:root { --color-primary-500: #xxx; }
Tailwind Config	theme.extend object (use JSON.stringify for safety)
JSON (flat)	Flattened key-value pairs

Export is extensible — add formats as needed without changing core skill.

Scripts

Deterministic operations use Python scripts (stdlib only, no pip deps):

Validate

python .claude/skills/design-system/scripts/validate-tokens.py [tokens-dir]
# Default tokens-dir: docs/design-system/
# Exit 0 = valid, Exit 1 = errors found

Export

python .claude/skills/design-system/scripts/export-tokens.py [tokens-dir] --format css|tailwind|json-flat [--theme light|dark] [--output file]