Discovery source inventory
Research window: public web reviewed through 2026-08-11. Dates marked “live” are continuously maintained pages with no reliable publication date. Evidence levels follow the requested scale. “Area” is descriptive, not a capability framework: product UX, AI builds with DS, agentic UX, or field evidence.
IBM / Carbon
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon for AI | IBM Carbon | live; reviewed 2026-08 | Official design-system guidance | 1 | Product UX: AI presence, explainability, chat, accessibility | Yes |
| AI label | IBM Carbon | stable by 2026-07 | Production component docs | 1 | Product UX: disclosure and explainability | Yes |
| AI tokens | IBM Carbon | live | Production token docs | 1 | Product UX: scoped AI styling | Yes |
| Carbon AI Chat overview | IBM Carbon | v1 announced 2025-10-14 | Production library docs | 1 | Product UX: backend-agnostic chat | Yes |
| carbon-ai-chat | IBM Carbon | active 2026 | Source repository | 1 | Product UX implementation | Yes |
| Carbon MCP overview | IBM Carbon | 2026-02-19 | Official tooling docs | 1 | AI builds with DS | Yes |
| carbon-mcp | IBM Carbon | active 2026 | Source repository | 1 | AI builds with DS | Yes |
| Carbon monorepo | IBM Carbon | active; v11.108 in 2026-05 | Source repository | 1 | Components, themes, tokens, AGENTS.md | Yes |
Microsoft
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fluent design resources | Microsoft Fluent | live | Official design-system docs / UI kits | 1 | Product UX: Copilot UI Kits across web/iOS/Android | Yes |
| Content engineering | Microsoft Fluent | live | Formal design-system guidance | 2 | Product UX: prompt/system-behavior content | Yes |
| Human-centered design for agents | Microsoft | 2026-05-21 | Official agent design guidance | 2 | Agentic UX lifecycle and Fluent use | Yes |
| Accessibility and inclusion for agent design | Microsoft | 2026-05-21 | Official agent guidance | 2 | Agentic UX accessibility | Yes |
| A simplified system | Microsoft Design | 2026-05-12 | Design-team article | 2 | Product UX: AI-first Copilot interaction architecture | Yes |
| HAX Guidelines for Human-AI Interaction | Microsoft Research | foundational, maintained | Research-backed design library | 2/3 | Product UX lifecycle | Preserve |
| Guidelines for Human-AI Interaction paper | Microsoft Research | 2019 | CHI research paper | 3 | Foundational human-AI UX | Preserve |
Atlassian
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rovo UI / Rovo Dialect | Atlassian Design | live 2026 | Formal design-language guidance | 2 | Product UX: recognizable AI expression | Yes |
| Rovo AI patterns | Atlassian Design | live 2026 | Official patterns | 2 | Product UX: AI moments | Yes |
| ADS: building the context engine for the AI era | Atlassian | 2026-05-28 | Official team article | 2 (some implementation claims) | AI builds with DS; product UX | Yes |
| What are Rovo agents? | Atlassian | live | Product documentation | 1 | Agent capability/context model | Supporting |
SAP
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI and Joule Design guidelines | SAP Fiori | maintained through 2025–26 | Official design-system guidance | 2 | Product UX: trust, prompts, safety, feedback, XAI | Yes |
| AI and Joule archive/category | SAP Fiori | live | Official pattern archive | 2 | Product UX: matching, ranking, recommendations, explanations | Yes |
| Joule mobile get started | SAP | 2026 | Official design-system docs | 2 | Product UX: in-app AI and Joule | Yes |
| Evolving design systems for AI-driven UX | SAP Design | 2026 | Official implementation case/article | 1/2 | Generative UI; machine-readable composition logic | Yes |
Singapore Government Design System and WordPress
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SGDS AI | GovTech Singapore | live 2026 | Official design-system section | 1/2 | Product UX components and patterns | Yes |
| Design and code, finally speaking the same language | GovTech Singapore | 2026-05 | Official team article | 2 | Figma MCP, Code Connect, skills, shared context | Yes, bounded |
| WordPress design-system MCP | WordPress/Gutenberg | 2026-04-20 | Official package documentation | 1 | Machine-readable components, examples, tokens | Yes, bounded |
Figma, Storybook, and documentation infrastructure
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design systems and AI: why MCP servers are the unlock | Figma | 2025-08-06 | Official product/design article | 2 | AI builds with DS | Yes |
| Code Connect integration for Figma MCP | Figma | live 2026 | Official developer docs | 1 | Code mappings and custom agent rules | Yes |
| What MCP sends vs. what the agent does | Figma | live 2026 | Official developer docs | 1 | Boundary between context and generation | Yes |
| Design context, everywhere you build | Figma | 2025-09-23 | Official product article | 2 | MCP and Code Connect distribution | Supporting |
| The future of design is code and canvas | Figma | 2026-02-17 | Official product article | 2 | Bidirectional code/canvas workflow | Supporting |
| Figma Code Connect | Figma | active 2026 | Source repository | 1 | Design-to-code mapping | Yes |
| Storybook MCP server | Storybook | live 2026 | Official implementation docs | 1 | Component manifests, docs, story tests | Yes |
| zeroheight MCP overview | zeroheight | updated 2026-03-19 | Official product docs | 1 | DS docs exposed to AI assistants | Supporting |
| 2026 Design Systems Report | zeroheight | 2026 | Practitioner survey | 3 | Field adoption and attitudes | Yes |
Foundational and agent UX research
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| People + AI Guidebook | Google PAIR | foundational, maintained | Research-based guide | 2/3 | Product UX: mental models, feedback, errors, trust | Preserve |
| Design principles for generative AI applications | academic authors | 2024 | Research paper | 3 | Generative AI UX principles | Preserve |
| How practitioners use the People + AI Guidebook | academic authors | 2023 | Research case study | 3 | Use of AI guidelines in practice | Preserve |
| How UX practitioners communicate AI as a design material | academic authors | 2023 | Research paper | 3 | AI design artifacts and reasoning | Preserve |
| How agents ask for permission | Michael & Roesner | 2026-07-15 | Research survey | 3 | Agent permissions UX/enforcement | Yes |
| Framework of UX principles for human-AI agent interaction at work | academic authors | 2026-07-22 | Research paper | 3 | Agentic workplace UX | Yes |
| ChatGPT Agent System Card: user confirmations | OpenAI | 2025 | Production system card | 1/2 | Confirmation, supervision, action risk | Preserve |
| Designing agents to resist prompt injection | OpenAI | 2026-03-11 | Official engineering/safety article | 2 | Consent and constrained action | Preserve |
| Designing for agentic AI | Victor Yocco / Smashing | 2026-02-11 | Practitioner pattern article | 3 | Control, consent, accountability, undo | Yes |
Practitioner and community evidence
Community items are Level 4 opinion unless they link to stronger evidence. They are retained because they reveal current problems and disagreement, not policy.
| Source | Organization / community | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Worth deep crawl? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Into Design Systems: Design Systems MCP | Into Design Systems | 2026 | Conference-derived guide | 3 | DS MCP and benchmarks | Yes |
| Your Design System Is Not Ready for AI Agents | Into Design Systems | 2026 | Conference synthesis | 3 | Agent failure modes with DS | Yes |
| Design systems that document AI | Romina Kavcic | 2026-06-01 | Practitioner inventory | 3 | Comparative public-system evidence | Yes |
| Making your design system agent-ready | De Voorhoede | 2026 | Practitioner article | 3/4 | Documentation and agent context | Supporting |
| Agentic design system | TDP | 2026-05-07 | Practitioner article | 4 | Machine-readable metadata/anti-patterns | Supporting |
| Looking for experiences building DS for AI development | r/DesignSystems | 2026-05 | Forum discussion | 4 | No consensus: files vs MCP vs repo | Preserve |
| Building a DS for humans and AI agents | r/DesignSystems | 2026-06-02 | Forum discussion | 4 | Human review, MCP, documentation loops | Preserve |
| Design system in new AI-native world | r/DesignSystems | 2026-06-28 | Forum discussion | 4 | Code imports, DESIGN.md, doc freshness | Preserve |
| MCP & design systems—am I missing something? | r/FigmaDesign | 2026-03-16 | Forum discussion | 4 | Metadata alone vs implementation mappings | Preserve |
| Enterprise DS workflow with AI | r/UXDesign | 2026-05-31 | Forum discussion | 4 | Generated layers are not real components; governance | Preserve |
| AI-generated UI makes strong DS more valuable | r/DesignSystems | 2026-05-16 | Forum discussion | 4 | Constraint and quality debate | Preserve |
| MCP server over UI component libraries | r/DesignSystems | 2026-07 | Forum/project discussion | 4 | Search/reuse vs hallucinated components | Preserve |
Reviewed but weak, derivative, or excluded
| Source | Organization | Date | Type | Evidence level | Area | Disposition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI2 agent-native design system | AI2 | 2026 | Commercial component library | 5/1 | “Agent-native” positioning plus registry | Tier 3: code exists, but claims and adoption are not independently established |
| DEUS design system | DEUS | live | Marketing/design-system site | 5 | “AI component” positioning | Exclude from deep study |
| AI-ready design systems | DesignSystems.one | 2026 | Practitioner/marketing guide | 4/5 | Prescriptive AI-ready claim | Terminology evidence only |
| Better Design MCP | independent OSS | 2026 | Repository/product | 1/4 | MCP registry and themes | Tier 3 experiment; inspect only if benchmarking registries |
| Design Systems MCP | independent OSS | 2026 | Repository | 1/4 | Aggregated DS knowledge | Tier 3; not an owning system |
| Future of design systems with AI | HCLTech | 2026 | White paper | 5/3 | Broad future claims | Supporting at most; verify claims independently |
Inventory notes
- No strong public evidence was found that GitHub Primer, GitLab Pajamas, Shopify Polaris, Adobe Spectrum, Oracle Redwood, or Salesforce Lightning currently expose a comparably coherent, formal AI extension. Their products contain extensive AI work, but public evidence tying it to the design system is thin or fragmented; they should not be promoted because of brand recognition alone.
- ServiceNow has valuable practitioner writing on agentic UX, but the public evidence located was not a formal extension of its design system.
- Dates on continuously deployed documentation are inherently unstable. A later crawl should capture commit history or page metadata rather than treating the crawl date as publication date.