Open · v0.1.6

Open design intelligence

Designesy publishes portable design judgment — contracts, kits, labs, and field checks people and agents can fetch, run, and remix.

Portable design rules, prompts, and verification people and agents can fetch, run, and remix. This is the canonical Designesy reference — human index and machine feed stay synchronized.

PublicMachine · /open.jsonAgents · /llms.txtStack · contracts · kits · labs · reviews · tools

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Thesis

What open means here

Open design intelligence means rules, prompts, and verification travel with the work — not locked in private taste or closed tools.

How to use

Packages

Live portable cargo. Machine URLs are CORS-open JSON for agents and tools. Each package carries a spoken abstract — automated voice, synthesized at build time, served as static audio.

01Contract · Design system · v0.4.0Portable design judgment for designesy.org — tokens, motion, components, and adopted Poise + Takt + Cadence + Acoustics rules./contracts/design-system/contracts/design-system.json

02Kit One · Design Review · v0.1Turn taste into inspection. Eight dimensions, portable agent prompt, output format, and verification./kits/design-review/kits/design-review.json

03Lab One · Poise · v0.1Restrained interaction — wordmark breath, press settle, sound preference, reduced motion. Rules adopted into contract v0.1.1./labs/poise/labs/poise.json

04Lab Two · Takt · v0.1Interface feel — concentric radii, press scale, image outlines, hit areas, stagger rhythm. Rules compiled from external design intelligence and adopted into contract v0.1.2./labs/takt/labs/takt.json

05Lab Three · Cadence · v0.1Text rhythm — font smoothing, rem-based scale, line-height by role, tracking by size, measure cap, text-wrap, tabular numbers, selection. Rules compiled from external typography intelligence and adopted into contract v0.1.3./labs/cadence/labs/cadence.json

06Lab Four · Acoustics · v0.1Interaction sound — nineteen cues, nineteen roles, Cuelume v0.2.2 engine. Acoustic token system adopted into contract v0.3.0./labs/acoustics/labs/acoustics.json

07Review · Field check · Poise · v0.1Lab One reviewed with Use Kit One · Design Review. Pass with notes. Evidence for contract adoption./review/poise · human surface

08Review · Field check · Takt · v0.1Lab Two reviewed with Use Kit One · Design Review. Pass with notes. Live CSS confirms every verifiable rule. Five takt rules adopted into contract v0.1.2./review/takt · human surface

09Review · Field check · Cadence · v0.1Lab Three reviewed with Use Kit One · Design Review. Pass with notes. Live CSS confirms 10 verifiable typography rules. Cadence rules adopted into contract v0.1.3./review/cadence · human surface

10Review · Field check · Acoustics · v0.1Lab Four reviewed with Use Kit One · Design Review. Pass with notes. Nineteen cues, nineteen roles, five accessibility protections. Acoustic mapping rules adopted into contract v0.3.0./review/acoustics · human surface

11Review · Keyboard path · Poise · v0.1Published tab order and focus-visible proof for Lab One./review/poise/keyboard · human surface

12Review · Keyboard path · site-wide · v0.1Skip link, main landmark, shared chrome tab order, and focus-visible criteria for the public surface./review/keyboard · human surface

13Review · Open handoff pack · v0.1First public share pack: thread copy, agent prompt, and verification paths pointing at /open./open/handoff · human surface

14Review · Field check · designesy.org · v0.1Public surface review of designesy.org against the design system contract./review/designesy-org · human surface

15Contract · Acoustic tokens · v0.1.1Acoustic token system — the sound parallel to the visual token system. Net-new relative to W3C DTCG. Engine: Cuelume v0.2.2./acoustic-tokens/acoustic-tokens.json

16Contract · Tokens · v0.1.0W3C DTCG 2025.10 token-format conformance — color-space rules, custom types (spring, sound), 10 verification checks. Sibling to the design system contract./contracts/tokens/contracts/tokens.json

17Contract · Accessibility · v0.1.0axe-core 4.13.0 + WCAG 2.2 AA + ACT Rules. Machine-checkable accessibility verification with brand customization and provenance chain. 11 verification checks./contracts/a11y/contracts/a11y.json

18Contract · Motion · v0.1.0Lottie spec v1.0.1 JSON Schema + Designesy §16 Ten Non-Negotiable Motion Standards. Reduced-motion via markers/slots. 10 verification checks. Sibling to the design system contract./contracts/motion/contracts/motion.json

19Tool · Maturity self-assessment · v0.1Interactive 24-question, 6-axis design compliance maturity questionnaire with radar chart and shareable results. Maps to token discipline, motion consistency, accessibility readiness, platform fit, identity & copy, and verification maturity./maturity · human surface

20Tool · Framework evaluations · v0.1Per-site evaluation pages for 30 scored design frameworks and sites. Each page has a score dial, per-category breakdown, auto-generated narrative, peer comparison, and cohort context./frameworks · human surface

21Tool · Contract changelog · v0.1Contract changes organized by 11 design dimensions (tokens, motion, cadence, accessibility, takt, poise, acoustics, copywriting, identity, security, verification). 14 entries from v0.1.0 to v0.4.0./changelog · human surface

22Tool · M3 → DTCG bridge · v0.1Convert Material 3 design tokens to W3C DTCG 2025.10 format. M3 DSP export was archived October 2024 and doesn't emit DTCG. Client-side converter with 5-check validation. The neutral bridge between Google's two non-interoperating design-data initiatives./m3-bridge · human surface

23Tool · Spring physics validator · v0.1Validate spring-based motion against an accessibility/reduced-motion contract. Simulates a damped harmonic oscillator, computes damping ratio and overshoot, and renders an accessibility verdict. 8 presets including M3 Expressive, iOS, and Framer Motion. Green-field validation capability no one else offers./spring-validator · human surface

Machine exports

01Open index/open.json · Catalog of all portable packages 02Design system contract/contracts/design-system.json · v0.4.0 tokens, interaction, takt, cadence, duration scale, verification 03Tokens contract/contracts/tokens.json · v0.1.0 W3C DTCG 2025.10 token-format conformance — color-space rules, custom types, 10 checks 04Accessibility contract/contracts/a11y.json · v0.1.0 axe-core 4.13.0 + WCAG 2.2 AA + ACT Rules — brand customization, provenance chain, 11 checks 05Motion contract/contracts/motion.json · v0.1.0 Lottie spec v1.0.1 JSON Schema + §16 Ten Non-Negotiable Motion Standards — reduced-motion, 10 checks 06Design Review kit/kits/design-review.json · Kit One prompt, dimensions, output format 07Design system SKILL.md/contracts/skill · SKILL.md agent skill format — behavioral rules for AI coding agents 08Acoustic tokens/acoustic-tokens.json · Acoustic token system v0.1.1 — nineteen cues, nineteen roles, Cuelume engine, net-new vs W3C DTCG 09Graph/graph.json · Provenance chain v0.1 — source to shipped work, ten stages, public examples 10MCP server/api/mcp · Streamable HTTP MCP endpoint — 17 design-intelligence tools (catalog, contract, design review, skill, agent.json, llms.txt, llms-full.txt, score, tokens, a11y framework, motion, drift, readiness, guardrails, monitor, compare, report) + 1 MCP App UI resource. Docs: /docs/mcp

Standing rules

Anti-patterns

01Design system contractv0.4.0 · human + machine 02Use Kit One · Design ReviewPortable agent prompt · human + machine 03Open handoff packShare copy, agent prompt, verification paths 04Keyboard path · site-wideSkip link, main landmark, shared chrome 05DocsMission, principles, architecture

External references

Designesy builds on open standards, community proposals, and open-source libraries. These are the external surfaces cited in the contract and labs.

01W3C Design Tokens Format Module 2025.10Canonical token standard — color, dimension, motion (duration, cubicBezier, transition)02llms.txtAgent-facing website context standard (Jeremy Howard, 2024)03AGENTS.mdRepo-level agent guidance format (Linux Foundation, 60k+ projects)04Cuelume v0.2.2Interaction sound engine (MIT, Daniel Belyi) — powers acoustic tokens 05transitions.devTransition gallery (Matthew Antalik) — duration scale cross-referenced in contract 06design.md (Google Labs)Input format for AI coding agents — YAML tokens + markdown prose. The brief layer this contract extends with 42 verification checks.

Start open design intelligence at designesy.org/open — human index and machine feed. Machine feed is CORS-open JSON. Packages without a machine URL are human-first evidence surfaces until a schema is published.