A Comprehensive Design System Audit and Refactoring Plan

ESSAY • JULY 13, 2025 • 1,000 WORDS

Objective

You are a senior UI/UX engineer and front-end architect. Your mission is to perform a comprehensive audit of this project’s front-end architecture and produce a prioritized, actionable refactoring plan to establish a robust, maintainable, and consistent design system.

The final plan must be guided by these five core principles:

  1. Single Source of Truth (SSoT): All design decisions (spacing, color, typography) should originate from a single, authoritative source.
  2. System Over Ad-Hoc Values: The system must eliminate “magic numbers” and inconsistent one-off values.
  3. Configuration-Driven Design: The project’s tools, especially Tailwind CSS, must be configured to enforce the design system.
  4. Separation of Semantics and Styling: The visual presentation of elements should be decoupled from their underlying HTML tags.
  5. Developer Experience (DX): The system should be intuitive and easy for developers to use correctly.

Execute this mission in two phases.---### Phase 1: Comprehensive Audit

Use the available tools (read_file, search_file_content) to investigate the codebase and answer the following questions. Document your findings for each point.

  1. Audit the Single Source of Truth (SSoT):
  • Action: Analyze src/styles/global.css.
  • Goal: Identify the core design tokens. Does a system of CSS Custom Properties exist for the baseline grid (--baseline, --grid-unit), spacing scale (--space-*), and color palette? Document this as the foundational “source of truth.”
  1. Audit for Systemic Consistency (System vs. Ad-Hoc):
  • Action: Use search_file_content across all *.astro and *.mdx files.
  • Goal: Identify all instances of spacing, sizing, and color values that deviate from the established SSoT.
  • Search for hardcoded values (e.g., p-[13px], h-[50px]).
  • Search for default Tailwind utilities that are not part of our grid-aligned system (e.g., p-3, p-5, mt-10, h-8, w-12).
  • Create a list of files containing these non-compliant values.
  1. Audit the Configuration Layer (tailwind.config.ts):
  • Action: Read and analyze tailwind.config.ts.
  • Goal: Determine how well the configuration enforces the SSoT. Does the theme.extend.spacing object correctly map utility names (e.g., 1b, 2b) to the CSS variables (var(--space-1))? Is the same true for colors and fontSize? Identify any gaps in this configuration.
  1. Audit the Separation of Semantics and Styling:
  • Action: Review src/styles/global.css and any other CSS files.
  • Goal: Identify styles applied directly to raw HTML elements (e.g., h1 { font-size: 2rem; }, p { margin-top: 1em; }). Assess whether these global styles create conflicts with the intended utility-class-driven approach.
  1. Audit the Developer Experience (DX):
  • Action: Review the naming conventions found in the SSoT and the Tailwind configuration.
  • Goal: Evaluate the clarity of the token names. Is the *b convention (e.g., p-4b) clear, or would a more semantic approach (e.g., p-space-m) be more intuitive for the development team?---### Phase 2: The Refactoring Plan

Based on your audit findings, produce a formal, prioritized refactoring plan. Structure your response in three distinct sections:

A. Audit Summary:

  • Provide a high-level assessment of the current system’s health.
  • Briefly summarize the key strengths (e.g., “A foundational SSoT exists”) and the primary weaknesses (e.g., “Systemic inconsistency and configuration gaps are prevalent”).

B. Prioritized List of Issues:

  • Organize the problems you discovered into three categories: High Priority, Medium Priority, and Low Priority.
  • High Priority: Issues that fundamentally break the system’s integrity (e.g., widespread use of hardcoded values in key components).
  • Medium Priority: Issues that cause inconsistency but are less critical (e.g., prose styles not fully aligned with the grid, non-standard icon sizes).
  • Low Priority: Cosmetic or DX improvements that can be addressed after the core system is stable (e.g., renaming utility classes).

C. Step-by-Step Refactoring Strategy:

  • Provide a clear, actionable plan to resolve the identified issues, starting with the highest priority.
  • Step 1: Solidify the Foundation. If needed, specify changes to global.css or tailwind.config.ts to ensure the SSoT is complete and correctly integrated.
  • Step 2: Systematic Value Replacement. Detail the process for replacing all non-compliant values. Provide a list of files to be modified and give concrete examples (e.g., “In Header.astro, replace px-5 with px-4b.”).
  • Step 3: Address Semantic Styling. Propose a plan to refactor conflicting global styles, likely by migrating them to utility classes or component-specific styles.
  • Step 4: Propose DX Enhancements. As a final, optional step, outline a strategy for any recommended naming convention changes.
  • Step 5: Verification. Conclude the plan with a list of commands (pnpm lint, pnpm check, pnpm build) that must be run to verify the successful completion of the refactoring.