The Kind of AI Design System You Should Build

Presentation byLeonardo Lemos

Most teams hear "AI design system" and reach for the thing they already know: a component library, now with a chat panel bolted onto it. I think that's the wrong shape. A design system in an AI-assisted codebase isn't a catalogue of components; it's a set of architectural contracts that a coding agent can actually be held to. Tokens, composition rules, and constraints that are legible to a model, not just to a designer in Figma.

The talk walks through what that looks like in practice: what an agent gets wrong when your system is only documented in prose, how to encode intent so the generated code is boringly consistent instead of plausibly wrong, and where the boundary sits between what you let a model generate and what you pin down by hand.

What attendees can expect to take away:

  • A working definition of an AI design system that isn't just "components plus autocomplete"
  • The failure modes I've hit shipping React/TypeScript UI with coding agents, with real examples
  • Concrete techniques for encoding design constraints so agents produce consistent output
  • A sense of what to fix first if their current system is fighting their tooling rather than helping it

It's aimed at frontend and product engineers, and at design-system maintainers wondering what to do about all this. No prior AI-tooling experience needed.

Presented with these Guilds
Cover Photo for Web Engineering London (React Advanced)
Primary Photo for Web Engineering London (React Advanced)

Web Engineering London (React Advanced)

React Advanced London is a community organizing quarterly in-person events and an annual hybrid conference in October.

Engineers of all levels are welcome to join, our meetups are always free to attend and a great place to meet other likeminded people and share some insights about your work and experience from the stage.

Contact email: hi@reactadvanced.com

Want to give a talk at our next meetup? We welcome talk ranging from 5 to 20 min length on any topic related to React and/or React Native, submit them here and we'll be in touch https://forms.gle/rCiQ8Y4jajiC8AHMA

Venue proposal from: https://shorturl.at/FOT34

By joining this group you agree to comply to our Code of Conduct

1.9KMembers
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Thanks to AI, designers and PMs are now prototyping and deploying faster than ever, sometimes without writing a single line of code. Tools like Lovable, Bolt and others can generate entire applications directly from prompts, while design tools are blurring the lines between mockups and implementation. So where does that leave React engineers?

As AI tools become UI builders, one trend is clear: React is becoming their default output. It's quickly turning into the universal framework of AI, putting React developers at risk of seeing their core skills commoditized.

In a world where AI can generate impressive UIs and ship entire components from a single prompt, it's tempting to declare the death of frontend engineering.

But what if we're just looking at it wrong?

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We'll break down what's actually being automated (spoiler: it's not the hard stuff), the logic, flows, edge cases, performance, that's still on us. We'll examine where human acuity still matters, why knowing when not to use AI might be your new superpower, and how the integration of AI-generated React components into complex, multi-framework applications creates new engineering challenges.

This talk doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable question: what is your job when everyone can "build"?

If you're a frontend dev wondering whether you still have a job, you do. But it may not look the same as the one you trained for. The new frontier isn't just building components, but designing the systems that allow AI-generated components to function in the beautiful complexity of production applications.

Hadar Geva

The Kind of AI Design System You Should Build

Presentation byLeonardo Lemos

Most teams hear "AI design system" and reach for the thing they already know: a component library, now with a chat panel bolted onto it. I think that's the wrong shape. A design system in an AI-assisted codebase isn't a catalogue of components; it's a set of architectural contracts that a coding agent can actually be held to. Tokens, composition rules, and constraints that are legible to a model, not just to a designer in Figma.

The talk walks through what that looks like in practice: what an agent gets wrong when your system is only documented in prose, how to encode intent so the generated code is boringly consistent instead of plausibly wrong, and where the boundary sits between what you let a model generate and what you pin down by hand.

What attendees can expect to take away:

  • A working definition of an AI design system that isn't just "components plus autocomplete"
  • The failure modes I've hit shipping React/TypeScript UI with coding agents, with real examples
  • Concrete techniques for encoding design constraints so agents produce consistent output
  • A sense of what to fix first if their current system is fighting their tooling rather than helping it

It's aimed at frontend and product engineers, and at design-system maintainers wondering what to do about all this. No prior AI-tooling experience needed.

Presented with these Guilds
Cover Photo for Web Engineering London (React Advanced)
Primary Photo for Web Engineering London (React Advanced)

Web Engineering London (React Advanced)

React Advanced London is a community organizing quarterly in-person events and an annual hybrid conference in October.

Engineers of all levels are welcome to join, our meetups are always free to attend and a great place to meet other likeminded people and share some insights about your work and experience from the stage.

Contact email: hi@reactadvanced.com

Want to give a talk at our next meetup? We welcome talk ranging from 5 to 20 min length on any topic related to React and/or React Native, submit them here and we'll be in touch https://forms.gle/rCiQ8Y4jajiC8AHMA

Venue proposal from: https://shorturl.at/FOT34

By joining this group you agree to comply to our Code of Conduct

1.9KMembers
Similar Presentations
Cover Photo for React, AI, and the Fragmented Future of Frontend

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Thanks to AI, designers and PMs are now prototyping and deploying faster than ever, sometimes without writing a single line of code. Tools like Lovable, Bolt and others can generate entire applications directly from prompts, while design tools are blurring the lines between mockups and implementation. So where does that leave React engineers?

As AI tools become UI builders, one trend is clear: React is becoming their default output. It's quickly turning into the universal framework of AI, putting React developers at risk of seeing their core skills commoditized.

In a world where AI can generate impressive UIs and ship entire components from a single prompt, it's tempting to declare the death of frontend engineering.

But what if we're just looking at it wrong?

The pixel-pushing days may be over, but the complexity is just shifting layers. Welcome to the age of the back of the frontend. This talk explores how AI is fragmenting the frontend into fast, flashy outputs and deeply nuanced logic, and why the real value now lies beneath the surface.

We'll break down what's actually being automated (spoiler: it's not the hard stuff), the logic, flows, edge cases, performance, that's still on us. We'll examine where human acuity still matters, why knowing when not to use AI might be your new superpower, and how the integration of AI-generated React components into complex, multi-framework applications creates new engineering challenges.

This talk doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable question: what is your job when everyone can "build"?

If you're a frontend dev wondering whether you still have a job, you do. But it may not look the same as the one you trained for. The new frontier isn't just building components, but designing the systems that allow AI-generated components to function in the beautiful complexity of production applications.

Hadar Geva