Design system audit for product teams using TypeScript

Assess your current UI foundation, identify gaps, and create a prioritized roadmap. Tailored for product teams shipping with TypeScript.

Use this playbook to scope work, align design and engineering, and avoid the failure modes we see most often on TypeScript teams.

Who this is for: product teams shipping design system audit on TypeScript.

Typical constraints: designers embedded in squads, OKR pressure, mixed skill levels.

Success looks like: Faster feature delivery with fewer UI bugs in QA.

TypeScript focus areas: Export discriminated unions for variant props instead of loose strings.; Generate docs from types where possible (Storybook docgen, TSDoc)..

Watch for: Over-wide props types that accept any string and hide invalid combinations

• Components look similar but behave differently across squads
• Accessibility issues repeat because patterns are undocumented
• Design and engineering disagree on what is 'in the system'
• Token renames break multiple apps because naming is inconsistent
• Over-wide props types that accept any string and hide invalid combinations
• Breaking changes shipped without codemods or deprecation warnings
• Duplicate type definitions between design tokens and component props

1. Map live UI surfaces and who owns each pattern family.
2. Sample high-traffic flows for consistency, a11y, and token usage.
3. Score findings by user impact, rework cost, and fix complexity.
4. Agree on minimal standards and an adoption sequence stakeholders will follow.

TypeScript specifics:

• Export discriminated unions for variant props instead of loose strings.
• Generate docs from types where possible (Storybook docgen, TSDoc).
• Strict mode for the library package even if app code is gradual.

• Inventory of components, tokens, and patterns in use
• Severity-ranked findings with effort estimates
• 90-day roadmap with quick wins vs structural fixes
• Governance recommendations (RFC, review, release cadence)