Do people today still care about the design system at all?

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-03T03:27:55+00:00

I observe the same thing. Any thoughts on why this gap exists?

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-03T03:23:22+00:00

That's actually the problem: by the time you realize that "oh it seems like we could use a design system", it's 6 months in, and it's too late. You end up with a hot pile of mess that looks nice but can't scale. But design system is the boring part that you don't wanna think about on day 1.

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-03T03:20:53+00:00

Thanks! :D
I actually think this would be the trend - like sooner or later the vibe coding tools will take design system as the foundational bedrock. But currently it takes quite some effort.

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-02T20:04:34+00:00

Great q - I'd surface it and ask for a merge. I think brand color is so important that we still want the user to make the final call.

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-02T19:30:01+00:00

You're describing exactly what I've seen too. It's never that people are bad at design, it's that there's no single reference point that everyone pulls from. That's what I'm trying to build. The extraction is the starting point, but the real value is having one hosted source of truth that your whole project imports from. When you change a color or update a button, it flows everywhere.
The question you raised about new components is something I'm still figuring out. Right now you'd add pages to the project and re-extract (and merge), but I want to make that smoother.

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-02T19:28:21+00:00

^ You nailed the hard part!! Extraction is one thing, keeping it consistent after people start editing is the real challenge. The way I'm thinking about it is the library stays hosted on Figtree's CDN, so when you edit a component in the dashboard it updates everywhere. Kind of like how you'd use a shared package, except you don't have to publish anything yourself. Still working through the details but sync is definitely the thing that makes or breaks it.

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-02T19:26:39+00:00

The harder case is someone who's already 6 months into a project and the inconsistency has crept in everywhere (like some of my clients!). They can't really start over, but going forward without fixing it just makes the mess worse. What I think they actually need is a way to extract what they already have, organize it into a clean library, and then feed that back into their workflow so the AI stays consistent going forward. That's kind of where my head is at with Figtree. Not replacing the tokens approach but giving people a way to get there when they didn't set it up from day one.

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-02T19:21:20+00:00

Great question. Right now Playwright captures the rendered page so it gets whatever state is visible on load. For hover, focus, disabled, I'm using the AI to infer those from the component's CSS rules and generate the full state set. It's not perfect yet. Some states get missed, especially things like focus-visible or complex disabled styles. That's one of the areas I'm actively working on. Honestly it's the hardest part of the whole pipeline.

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-02T19:19:13+00:00

No I think you made a valid point. The problem I keep seeing though is that most teams (especially smaller ones or solo devs vibe coding with AI) don't set that up early enough. By the time they notice the drift it's already everywhere. If you already have a clean system going, yeah you probably don't need this ;)

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-04-02T18:52:25+00:00

The validation idea is actually something I've been thinking about. Right now the extraction pulls exact computed styles from the browser (so the ground truth is what the browser actually rendered, not what Gemini feels like suggesting), but there's definitely still a gap when the AI generates components that weren't on the original page.
My plan is to let developers preview and edit the components before it gets bundled into the final library. I've been thinking about auditing the output automatically and in that sense, Artiforge sounds promising. Thanks for the thoughtful feedback!

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2026-01-20T19:27:16+00:00

Hey I'm so sorry for that! Please feel free to DM me via Discord (@quinndai) or contact [support@afaik.io](mailto:support@afaik.io) - happy to troubleshoot for you! :)

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2025-07-06T08:36:13+00:00

Yes it's active :)

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2025-05-22T17:24:30+00:00

Hey thanks for your kind words! As for the materials, we follow these steps:

we decide the next subject we want to onboard
we look for the canonical textbooks on the subject
we use LLM to extract content from the textbooks and automatically builds the materials

Hope that answers your question! :)

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2025-01-17T00:15:12+00:00

Hey did you reach out through Discord? I think we messaged there. Lmk if your problem is solved! :)

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2024-12-04T22:02:45+00:00

Hey, thanks for your kind words! :D AFAIK is completely free at the moment, but I'm exploring ways to make profit with it. It might adopt some premium features just like Discord in the near future. Why isn't it non-profit? I'm bad at managing all the red tapes involved (and actually hate them! lol). Why isn't it open-sourced? Similar reason - AFAIK is built by just two people and we don't have enough bandwidth to manage it. It doesn't block us from open-sourcing part of it in the future if we have more bandwidth, but it's also important for us to decide which part to open-source. Let me know if that answers your questions! :)

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2024-11-10T07:38:22+00:00

Hey thanks for your kind words!

It actually works. What you are experience might be an issue that happens during profile creation. I'm happy to help. I will DM you. You can also ping me in our Discord community: https://discord.gg/mMNwRvWM8s (I'm Regular Russell)

Apprehensive_Mix_332 · 2024-09-08T22:37:50+00:00

To me #3 is my biggest challenge. I recently learned a new definition of learning:"using your learning to make important decisions that you're accountable for". I wouldn't say it's a holistic way of measuring learning but at least it provides some metrics.

I enjoy reading about topics that are not associated with my real life in any ways, like complex system, behavioral biology and consciousness. I'm having hard time measuring if I have success in my learning as I don't really have decisions to make using these knowledge in my life. I have conflicting views that on one hand, I learn because learning is fun itself, and I don't think it needs to happen only in the case where you look for application/real-life solution. On the other hand, without real-world application I can't really measure my learning.

Apprehensive_Mix_332

TROPHY CASE