Create Design System Rules

Overview

This skill helps you generate custom design system rules tailored to your project's specific needs. These rules guide AI coding agents to produce consistent, high-quality code when implementing Figma designs, ensuring that your team's conventions, component patterns, and architectural decisions are followed automatically.

Supported Rule Files

What Are Design System Rules?

Design system rules are project-level instructions that encode the "unwritten knowledge" of your codebase - the kind of expertise that experienced developers know and would pass on to new team members:

• Which layout primitives and components to use
• Where component files should be located
• How components should be named and structured
• What should never be hardcoded
• How to handle design tokens and styling
• Project-specific architectural patterns

Once defined, these rules dramatically reduce repetitive prompting and ensure consistent output across all Figma implementation tasks.

Prerequisites

• Figma MCP server must be connected and accessible
• Access to the project codebase for analysis
• Understanding of your team's component conventions (or willingness to establish them)

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Starting a new project that will use Figma designs
• Onboarding an AI coding agent to an existing project with established patterns
• Standardizing Figma-to-code workflows across your team
• Updating or refining existing design system conventions
• Users explicitly request: "create design system rules", "set up Figma guidelines", "customize rules for my project"

Required Workflow

Follow these steps in order. Do not skip steps.

Step 1: Run the Create Design System Rules Tool

Call the Figma MCP server's create_design_system_rules tool to get the foundational prompt and template.

Parameters:

• clientLanguages: Comma-separated list of languages used in the project (e.g., "typescript,javascript", "python", "javascript")
• clientFrameworks: Framework being used (e.g., "react", "vue", "svelte", "angular", "unknown")

This tool returns guidance and a template for creating design system rules.

Structure your design system rules following the template format provided in the tool's response.

Step 2: Analyze the Codebase

Before finalizing rules, analyze the project to understand existing patterns:

Component Organization:

• Where are UI components located? (e.g., src/components/, app/ui/, lib/components/)
• Is there a dedicated design system directory?
• How are components organized? (by feature, by type, flat structure)

Styling Approach:

• What CSS framework or approach is used? (Tailwind, CSS Modules, styled-components, etc.)
• Where are design tokens defined? (CSS variables, theme files, config files)
• Are there existing color, typography, or spacing tokens?

Component Patterns:

• What naming conventions are used? (PascalCase, kebab-case, prefixes)
• How are component props typically structured?
• Are there common composition patterns?

Architecture Decisions:

• How is state management handled?
• What routing system is used?
• Are there specific import patterns or path aliases?

Step 3: Generate Project-Specific Rules

Based on your codebase analysis, create a comprehensive set of rules. Include:

General Component Rules

- IMPORTANT: Always use components from `[YOUR_PATH]` when possible
- Place new UI components in `[COMPONENT_DIRECTORY]`
- Follow `[NAMING_CONVENTION]` for component names
- Components must export as `[EXPORT_PATTERN]`

Styling Rules

- Use `[CSS_FRAMEWORK/APPROACH]` for styling
- Design tokens are defined in `[TOKEN_LOCATION]`
- IMPORTANT: Never hardcode colors - always use tokens from `[TOKEN_FILE]`

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