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Design System Spec

A declarative, machine-readable specification for defining complete design systems as code.

What is DSS?

Design System Spec (DSS) provides a canonical framework for expressing design systems (like Material Design, Carbon, Fluent) in a structured, version-controlled, LLM-optimized format.

Key Features

  • Declarative definitions - Define tokens, components, patterns as data
  • Multi-format support - JSON/YAML for tokens, Markdown for documentation
  • LLM optimization - Explicit intent, contexts, and constraints for AI code generation
  • Code generation - Generate CSS, TypeScript types, and LLM prompts from spec
  • MCP Server - Expose design systems to AI assistants via Model Context Protocol
  • Theming contracts - Formal theming API between component libraries and applications
  • Diagram generation - Mermaid and D2 diagrams for architecture visualization
  • Compliance validation - Validate implementations against the spec
  • Go-first approach - Go structs as source of truth, generating JSON Schema
  • Embedded specs - Bundle specs into binaries with Go's embed package

Quick Install

# Install CLI
go install github.com/plexusone/design-system-spec/cmd/dss@latest

# Install Go SDK
go get github.com/plexusone/design-system-spec/sdk/go

Quick Example

# Show design system info
dss info

# Generate CSS, TypeScript types, and LLM context
dss generate --css ./src/index.css --types ./src/lib/types.ts --llm ./DESIGN_CONTEXT.md

# Generate theme bindings for external components
dss bind --output ./theme.css

# Validate theming contracts
dss contract validate

# Validate component implementations
dss validate ./src/components

# Start MCP server for AI assistant integration
dss-mcp --spec ./design-system

Canonical Layers

DSS defines 10 canonical layers for complete design system specification:

Layer Purpose
Meta System metadata (name, version, maintainers)
Principles Design philosophy and guidelines
Foundations Design tokens (colors, typography, spacing)
Components UI elements with variants and states
Patterns Multi-component solutions
Templates Page layouts
Content Voice & tone guidelines
Accessibility WCAG compliance requirements
Governance Versioning and deprecation policies
Theming Token mappings to external components

Next Steps