Tools
Four tools. Each is listed here for exactly one reason: what it enforces. A tool that enforces nothing is a preference, and this section has no opinion about preferences.
| Tool | Holds | Enforces |
|---|---|---|
| Figma | The source of the visual contract | Nothing on its own — it becomes enforcement through the token pipeline |
| Storybook | A story per component state | That every contracted state exists and is reviewable |
| Playwright | The journey tests | That a person can get through, in a real browser |
| axe | The accessibility scan | The mechanical accessibility guarantees, per story and per journey step |
The row that surprises people
Section titled “The row that surprises people”Figma enforces nothing. It is a design tool, and design tools cannot fail a build.
What makes the design system a contract is the pipeline out of Figma — variables exported to a reviewed token source, transformed into code, with a lint rule downstream rejecting anything that bypassed it. Without that, Figma is a very good drawing application containing a document two teams politely disagree with.
This is worth saying plainly because “we have a design system” almost always means “we have a Figma library”, and those are different claims.
Substitutions
Section titled “Substitutions”None of these four is load-bearing as a brand.
- Storybook can be any tool that renders a component in a named, reproducible state and lets tests run against it.
- Playwright can be any browser automation that can select by accessible role and name.
- axe is the engine inside most scanners, so you are probably using it whatever the wrapper is called.
- Figma can be any design tool that exports structured variables.
What is not substitutable is the property each one provides. Swap the tool, keep the property, and nothing on this site changes.
What is deliberately absent
Section titled “What is deliberately absent”A visual regression service has no page here, though the portal links one from the component library. That is not an oversight: the argument about it is the interesting part, and the tooling is a detail once the argument is settled.
Analytics and session replay are absent because they answer a different question — not “does it work” but “does it work for people”, which belongs to journey mapping and to the last step of the process.