Design

Skill 27 of 200

Design System

Audit, document, or extend your design system.

1 minute · 256 words · 11 sections

Install

$ npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins --skill design-system

$ npx skills add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins

» /plugin marketplace add anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins

The first command installs just this skill, by the name in its SKILL.md; the second installs the whole repository.

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md (opens in a new tab).

Manage your design system — audit for consistency, document components, or design new patterns.

Usage

/design-system audit                    # Full system audit
/design-system document [component]     # Document a component
/design-system extend [pattern]         # Design a new component or pattern

Components of a Design System

Design Tokens

Atomic values that define the visual language:

Colors (brand, semantic, neutral)
Typography (scale, weights, line heights)
Spacing (scale, component padding)
Borders (radius, width)
Shadows (elevation levels)
Motion (durations, easings)

Components

Reusable UI elements with defined:

Variants (primary, secondary, ghost)
States (default, hover, active, disabled, loading, error)
Sizes (sm, md, lg)
Behavior (interactions, animations)
Accessibility (ARIA, keyboard)

Patterns

Common UI solutions combining components:

Forms (input groups, validation, submission)
Navigation (sidebar, tabs, breadcrumbs)
Data display (tables, cards, lists)
Feedback (toasts, modals, inline messages)

Principles

Consistency over creativity — The system exists so teams don’t reinvent the wheel
Flexibility within constraints — Components should be composable, not rigid
Document everything — If it’s not documented, it doesn’t exist
Version and migrate — Breaking changes need migration paths

Output — Audit

## Design System Audit

### Summary
**Components reviewed:** [X] | **Issues found:** [X] | **Score:** [X/100]

### Naming Consistency
| Issue | Components | Recommendation |
|-------|------------|----------------|
| [Inconsistent naming] | [List] | [Standard to adopt] |

### Token Coverage
| Category | Defined | Hardcoded Values Found |
|----------|---------|----------------------|
| Colors | [X] | [X] instances of hardcoded hex |
| Spacing | [X] | [X] instances of arbitrary values |
| Typography | [X] | [X] instances of custom fonts/sizes |

### Component Completeness
| Component | States | Variants | Docs | Score |
|-----------|--------|----------|------|-------|
| Button | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ | 8/10 |
| Input | ✅ | ⚠️ | ❌ | 5/10 |

### Priority Actions
1. [Most impactful improvement]
2. [Second priority]
3. [Third priority]

Output — Document

## Component: [Name]

### Description
[What this component is and when to use it]

### Variants
| Variant | Use When |
|---------|----------|
| [Primary] | [Main actions] |
| [Secondary] | [Supporting actions] |

### Props / Properties
| Property | Type | Default | Description |
|----------|------|---------|-------------|
| [prop] | [type] | [default] | [description] |

### States
| State | Visual | Behavior |
|-------|--------|----------|
| Default | [description] | — |
| Hover | [description] | [interaction] |
| Active | [description] | [interaction] |
| Disabled | [description] | Non-interactive |
| Loading | [description] | [animation] |

### Accessibility
- **Role**: [ARIA role]
- **Keyboard**: [Tab, Enter, Escape behavior]
- **Screen reader**: [Announced as...]

### Do's and Don'ts
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|------|---------|
| [Best practice] | [Anti-pattern] |

### Code Example
[Framework-appropriate code snippet]

Output — Extend

## New Component: [Name]

### Problem
[What user need or gap this component addresses]

### Existing Patterns
| Related Component | Similarity | Why It's Not Enough |
|-------------------|-----------|---------------------|
| [Component] | [What's shared] | [What's missing] |

### Proposed Design

#### API / Props
| Property | Type | Default | Description |
|----------|------|---------|-------------|
| [prop] | [type] | [default] | [description] |

#### Variants
| Variant | Use When | Visual |
|---------|----------|--------|
| [Variant] | [Scenario] | [Description] |

#### States
| State | Behavior | Notes |
|-------|----------|-------|
| Default | [Description] | — |
| Hover | [Description] | [Interaction] |
| Disabled | [Description] | Non-interactive |
| Loading | [Description] | [Animation] |

#### Tokens Used
- Colors: [Which tokens]
- Spacing: [Which tokens]
- Typography: [Which tokens]

### Accessibility
- **Role**: [ARIA role]
- **Keyboard**: [Expected interactions]
- **Screen reader**: [Announced as...]

### Open Questions
- [Decision that needs design review]
- [Edge case to resolve]

If Connectors Available

If ~~design tool is connected:

Audit components directly in Figma — check naming, variants, and token usage
Pull component properties and layer structure for documentation

If ~~knowledge base is connected:

Search for existing component documentation and usage guidelines
Publish updated documentation to your wiki

Tips

Start with an audit — Know where you are before deciding where to go.
Document as you build — It’s easier to document a component while designing it.
Prioritize coverage over perfection — 80% of components documented beats 100% of 10 components.

About this skill

Trigger

Audit, document, or extend your design system. Use when checking for naming inconsistencies or hardcoded values across components, writing documentation for a component's variants, states, and accessibility notes, or designing a new pattern that fits the existing system.

The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.

Colophon for this issue

Colophon

How this issue was made

Source

github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins, branch main, last pushed 23 September 2026.

Licence

Apache-2.0 — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.

Discovery

200 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 27 distinct layouts observed: bio-research/skills/*/SKILL.md, cowork-plugin-management/skills/*/SKILL.md, customer-support/skills/*/SKILL.md, data/skills/*/SKILL.md, design/skills/*/SKILL.md, engineering/skills/*/SKILL.md, enterprise-search/skills/*/SKILL.md, finance/skills/*/SKILL.md, human-resources/skills/*/SKILL.md, legal/skills/*/SKILL.md, marketing/skills/*/SKILL.md, operations/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/apollo/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/brand-voice/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/common-room/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/slack/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/contact-center/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/meeting-sdk/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/meeting-sdk/web/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/video-sdk/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/virtual-agent/*/SKILL.md, partner-built/zoom-plugin/skills/zoom-mcp/*/SKILL.md, pdf-viewer/skills/*/SKILL.md, product-management/skills/*/SKILL.md, productivity/skills/*/SKILL.md, sales/skills/*/SKILL.md.

Issue colours

Resolved from the awesome-design-md registry — hue 39°, chroma 0.113. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.

Typefaces

Display: Copernicus is not available to us; set in Newsreader.

We never load a typeface at request time from a third-party origin, so a brand face we do not already self-host is substituted rather than fetched.

Heading repairs

1 repair applied to this skill so the document has one h1 and no skipped levels:

Removed “/design-system”, a leading h1 that duplicated the skill title.

Spec compliance

53 editorial notes across 41 of 200 skills. They are printed in the margin of each skill rather than as errors here.

and 31 more.

Images

Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.

Marketplace

A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Anthropic, declaring 120 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.

Signal

Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.

Agent surfaces

The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.

Publication

Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.

If you see unfamiliar placeholders or need to check which tools are connected, see CONNECTORS.md (opens in a new tab).

Manage your design system — audit for consistency, document components, or design new patterns.

Usage

/design-system audit                    # Full system audit
/design-system document [component]     # Document a component
/design-system extend [pattern]         # Design a new component or pattern

Components of a Design System

Design Tokens

Atomic values that define the visual language:

Colors (brand, semantic, neutral)
Typography (scale, weights, line heights)
Spacing (scale, component padding)
Borders (radius, width)
Shadows (elevation levels)
Motion (durations, easings)

Components

Reusable UI elements with defined:

Variants (primary, secondary, ghost)
States (default, hover, active, disabled, loading, error)
Sizes (sm, md, lg)
Behavior (interactions, animations)
Accessibility (ARIA, keyboard)

Patterns

Common UI solutions combining components:

Forms (input groups, validation, submission)
Navigation (sidebar, tabs, breadcrumbs)
Data display (tables, cards, lists)
Feedback (toasts, modals, inline messages)

Principles

Consistency over creativity — The system exists so teams don’t reinvent the wheel
Flexibility within constraints — Components should be composable, not rigid
Document everything — If it’s not documented, it doesn’t exist
Version and migrate — Breaking changes need migration paths

Output — Audit

## Design System Audit

### Summary
**Components reviewed:** [X] | **Issues found:** [X] | **Score:** [X/100]

### Naming Consistency
| Issue | Components | Recommendation |
|-------|------------|----------------|
| [Inconsistent naming] | [List] | [Standard to adopt] |

### Token Coverage
| Category | Defined | Hardcoded Values Found |
|----------|---------|----------------------|
| Colors | [X] | [X] instances of hardcoded hex |
| Spacing | [X] | [X] instances of arbitrary values |
| Typography | [X] | [X] instances of custom fonts/sizes |

### Component Completeness
| Component | States | Variants | Docs | Score |
|-----------|--------|----------|------|-------|
| Button | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ | 8/10 |
| Input | ✅ | ⚠️ | ❌ | 5/10 |

### Priority Actions
1. [Most impactful improvement]
2. [Second priority]
3. [Third priority]

Output — Document

## Component: [Name]

### Description
[What this component is and when to use it]

### Variants
| Variant | Use When |
|---------|----------|
| [Primary] | [Main actions] |
| [Secondary] | [Supporting actions] |

### Props / Properties
| Property | Type | Default | Description |
|----------|------|---------|-------------|
| [prop] | [type] | [default] | [description] |

### States
| State | Visual | Behavior |
|-------|--------|----------|
| Default | [description] | — |
| Hover | [description] | [interaction] |
| Active | [description] | [interaction] |
| Disabled | [description] | Non-interactive |
| Loading | [description] | [animation] |

### Accessibility
- **Role**: [ARIA role]
- **Keyboard**: [Tab, Enter, Escape behavior]
- **Screen reader**: [Announced as...]

### Do's and Don'ts
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|------|---------|
| [Best practice] | [Anti-pattern] |

### Code Example
[Framework-appropriate code snippet]

Output — Extend

## New Component: [Name]

### Problem
[What user need or gap this component addresses]

### Existing Patterns
| Related Component | Similarity | Why It's Not Enough |
|-------------------|-----------|---------------------|
| [Component] | [What's shared] | [What's missing] |

### Proposed Design

#### API / Props
| Property | Type | Default | Description |
|----------|------|---------|-------------|
| [prop] | [type] | [default] | [description] |

#### Variants
| Variant | Use When | Visual |
|---------|----------|--------|
| [Variant] | [Scenario] | [Description] |

#### States
| State | Behavior | Notes |
|-------|----------|-------|
| Default | [Description] | — |
| Hover | [Description] | [Interaction] |
| Disabled | [Description] | Non-interactive |
| Loading | [Description] | [Animation] |

#### Tokens Used
- Colors: [Which tokens]
- Spacing: [Which tokens]
- Typography: [Which tokens]

### Accessibility
- **Role**: [ARIA role]
- **Keyboard**: [Expected interactions]
- **Screen reader**: [Announced as...]

### Open Questions
- [Decision that needs design review]
- [Edge case to resolve]

If Connectors Available

If ~~design tool is connected:

Audit components directly in Figma — check naming, variants, and token usage
Pull component properties and layer structure for documentation

If ~~knowledge base is connected:

Search for existing component documentation and usage guidelines
Publish updated documentation to your wiki

Tips

Start with an audit — Know where you are before deciding where to go.
Document as you build — It’s easier to document a component while designing it.
Prioritize coverage over perfection — 80% of components documented beats 100% of 10 components.