{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Mostly Working","title":"Ep #21: Cassie Groos (Unily): Design Systems for Agents, Infinite Brands, and Why the Canvas Stays","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3427,"description":"Tom and Jonny sit down with Cassie Groos, design systems lead at Unily, to learn what happens to a design system once AI starts reading it. They dig into the prose documents that brief her agents, unpack a token architecture built for an infinite number of brands, and go behind the scenes of her first big stage at Hatch.\n\nKey takeaways\n\nAI now reads the design system as well as helping to build it. That was the thesis of Cassie’s Hatch keynote. A system built for agents ships with context, skills and, more and more often, its own MCP server, so someone can ask an agent a question about the system and get the answer back.\nEvery component at Unily gets one prose document that its agents work from. Cassie calls it the CRD: a semi-structured document covering a component’s properties, requirements, behaviour and accessibility needs, including the details Figma can’t hold. It briefs the agent that builds the component and feeds its tests, and any agent using the component later reads it too. Send an agent to a polished documentation site like zeroheight instead and the human-friendly prose ‘blows out its context window’.\nSpell out what every designer already knows. Any designer knows the red button is for destructive actions. AI might decide purple suits it better, or that the brand red belongs on every primary button. Cassie reckons AI gets things right about 80% of the time, and more context plus repeated checks are how she closes the gap on the other 20%.\nHave one skill do the work and a second, stripped-back skill check it. Cassie’s contribution workflow, built so people outside the design system team can contribute, pairs a skill that holds the conventions with a review skill that has the same conventions and nothing else. Each check gets a little closer because the reviewer isn’t carrying the original context. She also runs a ‘Simplify prose’ skill over everything, borrowed from a friend and modelled on Simplify for code.\nFeature design is leaving Figma, and...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/DQbx92WsPLEetVRjQ1jDmzGQo-63kvktRkfvWgcuqaY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8zMjhj/MzgzYThjOWNmN2Iz/NDcwZWRkMjA0ZjBh/N2E0Yy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}