Isometry
Isometry is a concept for a developer tool that helps teams define, validate, and maintain design system components through machine-readable contracts. It gives components a shared specification layer that can be used by humans, CI pipelines, and AI workflows.
Problem
Design systems often rely on documentation, conventions, and manual review to keep components consistent. As teams scale, components drift: states go missing, accessibility rules become inconsistent, and implementation details fall out of sync with the original design intent. AI-generated code makes this faster, but not necessarily safer, because output still needs a reliable way to be checked against the system’s standards.
Context
Modern development teams already use linting, tests, type checks, and CI pipelines to keep code reliable. Design systems often lack the same level of automated enforcement: many component rules still live in documentation, review comments, or team knowledge. Isometry explores what it would look like to bring that same validation mindset to design systems, using component contracts that can be checked locally, in CI, and across AI-assisted workflows.
Solution
Isometry introduces a spec-first workflow for design system components. Teams define states, accessibility requirements, structural rules, variants, and constraints in an .isometry.yaml contract, then use the CLI to validate implementations locally or in CI. The same contract can support generation, review, documentation, and AI-assisted workflows, helping teams keep components aligned from spec to release.
