---
id: josef-richter
kind: person
title: "Josef Richter"
role: "Product designer and engineer"
confidence: "sourced"
atlas_url: https://designsystems.fly.dev/nodes/josef-richter.md
---

# Josef Richter

Built an agent-ready design system end to end and wrote the pipeline down in three parts: DTCG tokens through Style Dictionary, intent metadata over MCP and Code Connect back to the canvas; then typed contracts, readiness gates, durable evidence and explicit ownership; then a runnable contract that checks a Figma library, a React component and a Phoenix component against one definition, from the design tool and from CI. Deliberately language-agnostic rather than React-first. Argues that a contract arriving at a codebase that already shipped needs a measured denominator, because an agent reads the corpus as evidence of intent.

## Links

- site: https://josefrichter.design/
- part-i: https://josefrichter.design/blog/agentic-design-system
- part-ii: https://josefrichter.design/blog/agentic-design-system-part-2
- part-iii: https://josefrichter.design/blog/agentic-design-system-part-3

## Edges

- authored -> Building an Agentic Design System, From Pipeline to Governed Artifacts, Full validation loop in a contract-based agentic design system, The agent wrote its own tool. On the BEAM, it gets to keep it.
- focus -> Adoption and mandate, Agent skills, Agentic governance, Component contracts, Design tokens and DTCG, Deterministic gates, Documentation schema, Figma Code Connect, Figma files an agent can read, MCP servers, Tool gating, Validation loops
- holds -> Gate the task. Make the agent call a tool, run a CLI, pass a validator., Scan reality and count. Non-conformance is a state rather than an error, because an agent reads hundreds of legacy call sites as house style., The AI reviewer is advisory. The blocking check is deterministic.

## Sources

- https://josefrichter.design/blog/agentic-design-system
- https://josefrichter.design/blog/agentic-design-system-part-2
- https://josefrichter.design/blog/agentic-design-system-part-3