You don’t need a 400-token design system. You need eight decisions you refuse to remake every Tuesday.
Design systems are sold as infrastructure for hundred-person teams, so solo builders skip them entirely — and then remake the same button decision forty times a year. The right size for a team of one isn’t zero. It’s small and ruthless. Eight decisions, made once Two typefaces and their scale. One spacing unit and its multiples. Three text colors, two surface colors, one accent. Corner radius. Border weight. Shadow, if any. That’s the entire system. Write it down where the code can see it — CSS variables, not a PDF — and every future screen starts 80% decided. The system is a veto, not a cage The point isn’t consistency for its own sake; it’s conserving decision fuel for the problems that deserve it. When every screen shares the same bones, the one place you deliberately break the system actually lands — because it’s the only thing breaking it.