Design Systems Architecture

Design systems architecture is the strategic design of scalable, maintainable component libraries serving large teams. It includes: deciding component granularity (atoms vs molecules), naming conventions, design token systems, dependency graphs, governance (who can change what), versioning, and growth planning. A well-architected design system grows from 20 components to 200+ without becoming unmaintainable. A poorly-architected system becomes a mess at 50 components (circular dependencies, conflicting prop APIs, inconsistent naming).