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Product30 Jun 20256 min read
The design systems trap (and how to avoid it)
Mira Kahn
Principal · Engineering
Design systems become museums. Here's the operating model that keeps them as living engineering tools.
Design systems fail when they become a separate product. The cure is to make them a thin layer over your actual components, not a brand bible.
Ship the system in the same repo, version it with everything else, and never let it block product work. If a one-off needs a custom variant, that's fine — promote it later when a second product needs it.
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