Design · Sep 15, 2025 · 7 min read
When to build a design system (and when it's overengineering)
Most early-stage products waste two months on a design system they never use. Here's the threshold.
The threshold
If you have 1 designer, 2 developers, and one product — you don't need a design system. You need consistent components in your code. That's it.
When you do need one
- More than 3 people touching the UI
- Two or more products sharing the same brand
- External developers or agencies contributing
- You ship UI more than once a week and notice drift
Start with these 5 tokens, not 50
- Color: 3 brand + 5 semantic (success, warning, error, info, neutral)
- Typography: 1 family + 6 sizes
- Spacing: 4 / 8 / 16 / 24 / 32 / 48 / 64
- Radius: 0 / 4 / 8 / 16 / full
- Shadow: none / sm / md / lg
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