Glossary

ADS (Agentic Design Systems) A design system methodology built for a world where AI agents are first-class consumers alongside human designers and engineers. The central claim: the manifest (not the component library) is the product. The terms Agentic Design and Agentic Design Systems were first coined by Diego Packer Martins.

Agent / AI Agent Any AI-powered system that generates design output, writes component code, produces layout variations, or makes design decisions programmatically. In ADS, agents are first-class consumers of the manifest.

AI-Native A design system architected from the ground up to be reasoned about by AI agents, not just read by them. Encodes meaning and constraints at every level, not just values.

AI-Powered A workflow in which AI agents actively participate in generating design output, writing implementation code, or validating design decisions against system rules.

AI-Ready A transitional state for a design system that has been structured to support AI agent consumption: semantic tokens, machine-readable constraints, a queryable API.

Atomic Design The design system methodology defining five levels of UI abstraction: atoms, molecules, organisms, templates, and pages. ADS inherits the five-level hierarchy and transforms each level from a human-browsable artifact into a machine-queryable protocol element. ADS is an extension of Atomic Design, not a replacement.

Blanding The convergence of digital products toward a shared visual language that belongs to no specific brand. Occurs when design systems encode appearance without encoding identity. The shift from blanding to brand is the central strategic motivation for ADS.

Component Token The third layer of the ADS token architecture. Scopes semantic decisions to a specific component. button.background: {color.action.primary}.

Contract Level 3 of the ADS hierarchy. The machine-readable specification defining what a component can do, cannot do, what it requires, and what it promises. Contracts replace Organisms. A Contract violation fails the build.

Codegen (Code Generation) The automated process by which the manifest's token and Contract definitions are transformed into platform-specific implementations.

Drift The gradual divergence of a design system's manifest from the reality of the products it serves. Produces subtly wrong AI agent output that may not be visible until it has compounded.

Experience Level 5 of the ADS hierarchy. A validated interface output, generated by a human or an AI agent, verified against the relevant Protocol and Contract set. Experiences replace Pages.

Executable Constraint A constraint encoded as a machine-enforceable function rather than documentation prose. Enforced by the manifest's validate endpoint at build time.

Intent Level 2 of the ADS hierarchy. A named design goal — what a pattern is for, not what it looks like. The same Intent can resolve to different components on different surfaces.

Manifest The core artifact of an ADS. A single, versioned, machine-readable schema encoding the complete semantic knowledge of the design system: all Signals, Intents, Contracts, and Protocols. The manifest is the product. Everything else is a downstream artifact.

Manifest Owner The dedicated role responsible for the semantic correctness and currency of the manifest. The single point of accountability for ADS correctness. Must be dedicated headcount, not a rotation or part-time assignment.

Manifest Server The infrastructure that serves the manifest as a versioned API, exposing five endpoints: full manifest, query, validate, diff, and surface-resolved manifest.

Primitive Token The first layer of the ADS token architecture. Raw values with no semantic meaning: color.blue.600: #1A56DB. Never referenced directly by components.

Protocol Level 4 of the ADS hierarchy. A machine-readable configuration defining how Intents resolve for a specific surface, platform, and theme. Protocols replace Templates.

Protocol Architect A framing for the designer's role in an ADS. Rather than designing individual artifacts, the protocol architect designs the rules that govern how artifacts are produced across the entire product surface.

Semantic Audit The ADS-specific version of an interface inventory. Rather than cataloging what exists visually, it catalogs what exists semantically: what each pattern is for, what Intent it satisfies, and what constraints should govern its use.

Semantic Token The second layer of the ADS token architecture. Named references that encode design intent: color.action.primary: {color.blue.600}. The contract between design and engineering.

Signal Level 1 of the ADS hierarchy. The smallest meaningful design decision: a value with a semantic role, a constraint, and a set of valid and invalid contexts. Atoms encode appearance. Signals encode meaning.

Source of Truth In ADS, the source of truth is code. The manifest is generated from versioned code. All downstream artifacts — including Figma libraries, Storybook instances, and platform implementations — are derived from the manifest.

Theme A complete mapping of semantic tokens to primitive values for a specific product or brand. A theme change updates the visual expression of an entire product surface without changing a single line of component code.

Theme Agnosticism The property of a component library in which every brand-dependent value traces back to a semantic token rather than being hardcoded. The technical prerequisite for the shift from blanding to brand.

Velocity Trap The systemic failure mode in which individual teams moving faster by building outside the shared design system make the entire organization slower over time.

Webhook Diff An automated notification sent to consumer teams when a Contract, Signal, or Protocol they depend on changes in a new manifest version, including an auto-generated migration guide specific to each consumer's codebase.