2.9K WORDS · KOHTA KOUCHI
Building a design system as a team of one
Tokens, components and discipline when you're the designer, the engineer and the reviewer all at once.
A design system for one person sounds like overkill until you realise future-you is a different, forgetful collaborator. At Noahloy I built one from tokens up — colour, type, spacing — so that decisions made once didn't have to be re-litigated every screen.
The trick when you wear every hat is to externalise judgement into constraints. If the spacing scale only has six steps, you stop agonising over 13px versus 14px. The system isn't bureaucracy; it's a way to stop spending willpower on settled questions.
Done right, it also makes the handoff to a future teammate trivial — because the rules live in the code, not in my head.