Design System Schema
The single source of truth for how everything looks.
What it stores
The single source of truth for how everything looks. Colours, type, spacing, components, and motion all live here, so every site and document pulls from the same definitions instead of hard-coding values.
Owned by the Design agent. Lives in the Internal Tools database · design schema.
The tables
Friendly names first, with the real table name underneath. Key fields only.
Design Tokensdesign.tokens
Every colour, font, spacing, shadow, and motion value in the brand — the values everything else references.
| Column | Type |
|---|---|
nameHuman name, e.g. Brand Blue | Text |
tierprimitive, semantic, or component | Choice |
token_typecolour, typography, spacing, shadow… | Choice |
valueThe actual value | Text |
css_varThe CSS variable name | Text |
value_darkOptional dark-theme override | Text |
Componentsdesign.components
The catalogue of reusable interface components.
| Column | Type |
|---|---|
name | Text |
categoryprimitive, content, layout, navigation… | Choice |
description | Text |
component_groupGrouping for the gallery | Text |
Relationships
- one-to-many
design.component_variants. A component has many variants
Component Variantsdesign.component_variants
Each component's specific variations, with ready-to-use HTML and CSS that consumers drop straight in.
| Column | Type |
|---|---|
name | Text |
themelight, dark, or brand | Choice |
component_htmlReady-to-use markup | Text |
component_cssReady-to-use styles | Text |
usage_notesHow to compose it | Text |
Relationships
- one-to-one
design.components. Belongs to one component
Motion Presetsdesign.motion_presets
Named animation recipes — the keyframes and timing for consistent motion.
| Column | Type |
|---|---|
name | Text |
categorye.g. enter, emphasis | Text |
keyframesThe animation steps | Structured |
transitionDuration and easing | Structured |
You don't need all of this to start
Most of what these agents rely on has a simpler equivalent. Anywhere we use a database, you can usually start with a spreadsheet or a document — whatever you're comfortable with. Anywhere we built a custom MCP server, you can reach for a prebuilt AI connector instead of building your own.
We go further because it's where our experience pays off. Years of hands-on database work make a custom data layer feasible for us, and purpose-built MCP servers let us hand each agent a short, sharp instruction file and exactly the tools it needs — custom descriptions, only the endpoints we want, and the occasional extra gate — instead of a long manifesto or playbook. Nothing more, nothing less.
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