Design systems after the audit
The audit is not the design system. It is evidence about the current interface, including the evidence nobody has volunteered to own.
Move from inventory to decisions
Group components by user purpose and behaviour rather than visual resemblance. Record usage, variation, accessibility risk and technical ownership. Duplication is not automatically waste: two similar components may express genuinely different service rules.
component_status = {
"button-primary": "supported",
"promo-panel-v2": "deprecated",
"card-final-new": "owner_unknown",
"form-date": "do_not_touch"
}Establish a contribution path
Document how proposals are evaluated, who reviews accessibility and code, how migrations are funded and when a component becomes supported. Without a contribution model, the library is a showroom rather than shared infrastructure.
Package publishing credentials were last held by a contractor whose account has been deactivated.
Measure adoption honestly
Track production use, version lag, defect recurrence and time to migrate. Counting components rewards catalogue growth; measuring adoption reveals whether teams can actually use what has been built.