AI & DESIGN SYSTEMS

Links & Resources

Tips for Designers on Making it Through 2026 to the Other Side

🤔 Brad shared Mike Davidson's article on career advice for designers navigating 2026's AI landscape, arguing that 'the assembly layer is going away' and that designers must shift from specification and assembly work toward orchestrating AI tools and building functional products. The piece offers concrete advice on building AI-fluent portfolios and embracing a conducting role over a creating role.

View in Slack →

Figma Console MCP: New Accessibility Tools for Design and Code

🔥 TJ Pitre announced new accessibility tooling in Figma Console MCP that runs WCAG 2.2 checks on both design (contrast ratios, target sizes, focus indicators, heading hierarchy) and code (axe-core scanning for aria issues, semantic problems, and labeling gaps). The tools can be chained together with a parity check to keep design and code aligned — positioned as a deterministic safety net for catching easy-to-miss issues, not a replacement for human accessibility expertise.

View in Slack →

Paper – design, share, ship
Lynt: Code Readiness for Designers
Untitled Tool UI - Beautiful UI components for AI tool calls
The Cascade Effect in Context-Based Design Systems
Warp Terminal Download
Windsurf IDE Download
Zed IDE Download
Cursor Download
Google Gemini API Keys
Anthropic (Claude) Console / API Keys
OpenAI
Untitled AI for Good Foundation Coalition for Sustainable AI Responsible AI — All Tech Is Human Ada Lovelace Institute AI in Society - Center for Humane Technology Algorithmic Justice League Responsible Artificial Intelligence Institute Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF)
A.I. Revolution NOVA on PBS
Magic Patterns
A visual editor for the Cursor Browser
Subframe – The best way to build UI, fast.
blog.murphytrueman.com design-systems.slack.com levelup.gitconnected.com modelcontextprotocol.io Components as Data by Nathan Curtis
Design.Systems
StoryUI Layout Generation with MCP + Storybook (Your long-form demo)
MCP vs API: Simplifying AI Agent Integration with External Data - YouTube
Claude's Model Context Protocol is here... Let's test it - YouTube
What is MCP? Integrate AI Agents with Databases & APIs - YouTube
AI Design Systems Conference 2026 | Into Design Systems
StoryUI + MCP + Storybook demo
Figma MCP and the most useful Figma resources for designers 🌟
Guide to the Figma MCP server – Figma Learn - Help Center
Designer's summer AI stack - by Romina Kavcic
AI Is Redefining UI design - by Romina Kavcic
Demystifying intent in AI-driven workflows and systems | by Tony M | Level Up Coding
Your next design system user is an agent
Empire of AI by Karen Hao
'NEXUS' by Yuval Noah Harari
The Coming Wave Book
Doing More With Your Design System in Figma
Context-Based Design Systems: A New Model for the AI-Driven Product Lifecycle | Southleft, LLC
Vibe coding is not the same as AI-Assisted engineering.
Build your own MCP server for design tokens
Using the local zeroheight MCP server
Context Engineering: Bringing Engineering Discipline to Prompts
Components as Data
Google Antigravity
AI Glossary | Andreessen Horowitz
Addon MCP | Storybook integrations
Design Systems And AI: Why MCP Servers Are The Unlock | Figma Blog
AI and Design Systems | Brad Frost
Introducing Story UI: Accelerating Layout Generation with AI + MCP | Southleft, LLC
advocacy
ai
api
architecture
assessment
CBDS
claude
code
community
components
concepts
context engineering
context-based design systems
culture
data
design tokens
documentation
environment
ethics
figma
handoff
history
language
linting
mcp
nathan curtis
politics
process
props
southleft
storybook
strategy
technology
terminology
tool
vibe coding
visual builder
vocabulary
workflow
zeroheight