A design system's hardest problem isn't the initial build — it's staying relevant six months later. Systems that survive tend to share three habits: a clear owner, a lightweight contribution process, and visible use in real product work from day one.
Systems that stall usually skip one of those. No owner means drift. A heavy contribution process means people route around it. And a system built in isolation, without shipping alongside a real feature, rarely earns trust from the team that's supposed to use it.
If you're starting a design system, ship it attached to a real page first. Abstract components later, once you know they're worth abstracting.
