The practice

A design practice where prototypes cost hours.

I run AI as the delivery layer, not a faster pencil: design systems agents can read, gates so speed never eats craft, a knowledgebase that remembers why. One rule holds it — AI never drives a UX decision; it explores options, people decide. This site is the practice at work.

01Design systems agents can read

The system is the brief.

A system that lives in a Figma library and a designer's head can't hold the bar when machines generate the screens. So I write it down as rules an agent loads before it touches a file: tokens, type, spacing, visual rules, voice. This page runs on the system below.

# the system, as an agent reads it

accent: saulera amber #F59E0B · fill only, never headline text

radius: 0 everywhere · gradients: none · emoji: none

one accent per headline: an amber underline, one phrase

voice: first person, sentence case, British English

banned: transform, leverage, unlock, supercharge

→ agent loads rules → ships screens → gate checks them

Underneath: primitives beneath a semantic contract, components above. Components touch only the contract, so a re-skin is a one-file swap. In my email platform, agents built the densest surfaces against one token file and they read as one product.

See it in the email platform

02Quality gates

Craft held by machines.

I learned gates in email, where one broken render reaches three million people. My platform runs nine agents behind a ten-point automated gate; work ships when the checks pass, not when an agent sounds confident. A generated screen passes through:

01Token compliance: no value outside the system.
02Contrast and accessibility: WCAG AA, focus, labels, alt text.
03Spacing rhythm: the grid holds; drift is a failure, not a style.
04Voice: copy checked against the register, banned words caught.
05Pattern reuse: an existing component beats a newly invented one.
06A judge pass: a second model critiques the screen before a human sees it.

03The design knowledgebase

Decisions that remember.

Every decision goes in as a record: the choice, why, the alternatives rejected, the number that judges it, and — once the live test runs — what happened. Agents and designers query it first, so nobody decides blind and no idea dies twice for reasons nobody wrote down. One entry, from gerboni:

Guest checkout, by default

Decision: Guest checkout by default; an account is a reward, not a toll.
Because: First-order hesitation peaks at checkout; a forced sign-up taxes it.
Rejected: Account-gated checkout — cleaner data, paid in abandoned first carts.
Would measure: First-order completion against later account creation.

04The cadence

Diverge in Figma, converge in code.

01
Frame the bet
What we believe, what would change our mind, and the number that decides. Written first.
02
Diverge in Figma
Competing directions and flows, cheap to make and cheap to kill. Where stakeholders walk the thinking.
03
Converge in code
Agents read the system and the Figma file, and build the survivors as working prototypes. Hours, not sprints.
04
Gate it
Every variant clears the automated checks before a human reviews it.
05
Live-test and decide
Real flows in front of real people, against the number from step one. Then invest, iterate or kill.

05The three-year view

What a design team looks like when production is free.

Designers curate the knowledgebase

Production hands matter less; taste, framing and the judgement to say "no, again" matter more. Every call raises the floor the whole team stands on.

Every designer runs probes

When a live test costs a day, the roadmap becomes a portfolio of cheap questions with honest numbers.

The system is the advantage

Encode your craft as rules and gates and you ship at machine speed and still read as one hand. Skip it and you just ship faster slop.