# Design System Doc Spec (DSDS)

> A machine-readable format for design system documentation. DSDS structures a design system as a graph of entries (systems, components, tokens, themes, and custom kinds) and sections (definitions, guidelines, steps, and freeform content) for humans, parsers, and agents.

This site documents DSDS, a versioned JSON Schema. Every page below has an HTML version (for people) and a plain-markdown mirror at the same path with a `.md` extension (e.g. `/quickstart.md`, `/schema.md`) — the full content as text, no HTML/JS to parse. The Schema page's markdown includes every definition's field names, types, and requiredness; the bundled schema below is the single-file version of the same data.

## Machine-readable schema

- [manifest.json](https://designsystemdocspec.org/manifest.json): the typed machine index — every entity kind, the block kinds it accepts, and links to its page/markdown/schema/example. Start here.
- [Bundled schema, v0.20.0](https://designsystemdocspec.org/v0.20.0/dsds.bundled.yaml): every definition in one file
- [llms-full.txt](https://designsystemdocspec.org/llms-full.txt): every guide's full text plus the bundled schema, in one file for one-request ingestion
- [AGENTS.md](https://designsystemdocspec.org/AGENTS.md): how to consume these docs as an agent — where to start, what's normative, how to self-check your work
- [sitemap.xml](https://designsystemdocspec.org/sitemap.xml): every page on this site

## Guides

- [Conformance — DSDS 0.20.0](https://designsystemdocspec.org/conformance): What it means for a document to follow the DSDS spec: the four conformance classes, the three enforcement tiers, and every rule the validator enforces. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/conformance.md))
- [Examples — DSDS 0.20.0](https://designsystemdocspec.org/examples): Every validated example document DSDS ships, browsable by category: base documents, standalone entries, quickstart snippets, interop pairs, and the negative-test corpus. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/examples.md))
- [Security considerations — DSDS 0.20.0](https://designsystemdocspec.org/security): DSDS's trust model: a document is data, not instruction. What that means for for: agent rules, for href/checks pointers, and for $extensions. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/security.md))
- [Stability — DSDS 0.20.0](https://designsystemdocspec.org/stability): The DSDS compatibility policy: what counts as breaking, version semantics, the deprecation window, what's safe to build tooling around, and the criteria for declaring 1.0. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/stability.md))
- [Design system doc spec 0.20.0](https://designsystemdocspec.org/): A machine-readable format for design system documentation, what it means for a document to conform to the spec, and every rule the spec enforces. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/index.md))
- [DSDS quick start guide](https://designsystemdocspec.org/quickstart): Get started with DSDS — document structure, entry kinds, the section system, and minimal examples you can copy. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/quickstart.md))
- [Extending the schema — DSDS 0.20.0](https://designsystemdocspec.org/extending): Three ways to go beyond what the spec ships with — $extensions for tool-specific data, custom kinds for a document shape the spec doesn't have, and profiles for making an existing kind's optional fields required. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/extending.md))
- [Schema](https://designsystemdocspec.org/schema): Every DSDS schema definition, on one page, each with a real example next to it. ([markdown](https://designsystemdocspec.org/schema.md))