Design systems that survive their second year

A design system is a product with internal customers. Treat it like one.

The failure mode Year one: excitement, tokens, a Figma library. Year two: drift, forks, "we'll fix it later". The root cause is always governance, not tooling.

What works - A named owner with dedicated time, not a committee. - Semantic tokens (intent, not value): surface-raised, not gray-800. - Contribution ladders: propose → RFC → implement → document. - Versioned releases with codemods for breaking changes.

Measuring value Track adoption (percentage of screens on system components) and velocity (time from design to shipped UI). If neither improves, the system is decoration.