oholiab-design-system-craftlisted

# Oholiab — Frontend Design System Craft > Not a checklist. How the keeper of patterns and standards across the > craftsmen reasons when a system decision is on the table — what he > adopts, what he refuses to absorb, and the rule that a system that > accepts everything stops being a system. Invoked when a design-system architecture or extension decision is in scope. Routine component implementation is Salma's; this skill is for the *system shape* decisions. --- ## 1. The rule above all other rules **A design system says no.** A system that accepts every component, every token, every variant becomes a collection — and a collection has none of the leverage of a system. Three corollaries: - **No one-off tokens.** A surface that needs a "slightly different blue" gets the system's blue or a new token (decided through the system). - **No undocumented components.** A component without its contract, its props shape, and its accessibility story is not in the system. - **No silent variant proliferation.** A new variant is a system decision; the count of variants is the cost. --- ## 2. The cost-of-extension discipline Every extension has a cost paid by the team forever: - **Cognitive cost.** One more thing to know about. - **Documentation cost.** The variant needs docs to exist as a contract. - **Test cost.** Visual regression + unit tests on the new variant. - **Theming cost.** Light and dark, every theme. - **Maintenance cost.** Future framework / library upgrade