Context
ds2026 is my flagship personal project: a complete, opinionated design system built in the open to show — rather than describe — how I think a modern system should be put together. It’s where I prove the token pipeline, the component approach and the documentation ideas that the rest of this site talks about.
Problem
Most portfolio “design systems” are a color palette and a button. I wanted something that exercises the hard parts: a token source that survives contact with multiple platforms, components that aren’t tied to one framework, and documentation that holds up whether a human or a model is reading it.
Approach
Tokens are authored in a Brad Frost–style three-tier structure — primitive, semantic, component — as Figma variables, synced through Tokens Studio, versioned in GitHub, and compiled with Style Dictionary. From that single source the pipeline emits CSS custom properties, a React Native theme object and a Salesforce SLDS theme, so the same decisions reach very different targets.
Components are built with Lit, so they’re framework-agnostic web components that consume the tokens directly. The visual language is deliberately distinctive — anime meets Russian constructivism, set in Korolev Rounded — to prove the system can carry a real point of view, not just a neutral gray baseline.
Every piece ships with documentation in two registers: narrative docs and examples for people, and structured, unambiguous references meant for language models and coding agents.
Outcome
A working reference I can point clients to: one token source driving five output targets, a component set that drops into any framework, and a documentation model built for the way systems are actually consumed in 2026. It’s the piece I’d want a prospective client to look at first.