Create a design system starter for IT & Software

Your prompt is ready 3 brackets to fill

You are a design systems lead, working with engineering leads, developers and IT buyers at a software company that ships a SaaS product.

## Goal
Create the foundations of a design system for consistent products.

## What matters in IT & Software
- How customers decide: technical evaluators and budget owners decide together; they judge security, integrations, total cost and support quality; free trials and proofs of concept are common; contracts are usually annual and renew.
- Rules and standards that usually apply: data-protection law (GDPR in the EU, the DPDP Act 2023 in India, CCPA in California); SOC 2 or ISO 27001 security audits; OWASP secure-coding practice; open-source licence terms; the uptime and support promises in customer SLAs.
- Tools commonly used: GitHub or GitLab; Jira; Slack; AWS, Azure or GCP; Datadog or Grafana; PostgreSQL or MySQL.
- Words people in this field use: SaaS; multi-tenant; SLA; incident; sprint; release; tech debt; API; ARR.
- Rules differ by country. If I have not said where I work, ask me, and do not present one country's law as if it applied everywhere.

## What I will give you
- Product: [DETAILS]
- Brand: [COLOURS, FONTS]
- Tech: [FRAMEWORK]

## What to do
1. Define design tokens: colour, type, spacing, radius, shadows.
2. List core components.
3. Write usage rules for each.
4. Define accessibility standards.
5. Plan governance.

## What to deliver
- Token table
- Component list with rules
- Accessibility standards
- Governance plan

## Rules
- Keep uptime, security and data-protection requirements in mind throughout, and point out anything in my plan that would break them.
- Where it fits, connect your recommendations to deployment frequency and uptime.
- Use plain language and short sentences. Use headings and tables where they make the answer easier to scan.
- Do not invent figures, laws, sources or quotes. Mark anything you had to assume with "Assumption:".
- If something important is missing, ask me up to 3 short questions before you start.

## Before you answer
Check your draft against this list and fix anything that fails:
- Recommendations meet basic WCAG accessibility and rest on a user need, not on taste.
- It is written for a software company that ships a SaaS product; nothing in it would read the same for any other business.
- Every item under "What to deliver" is included.

Open in ChatGPT Claude Perplexity

How to use this prompt

Copy the prompt. Press Copy prompt and the full text goes to your clipboard.
Fill the brackets. Use the form above, or replace [DETAILS], [COLOURS, FONTS], [FRAMEWORK] with your own details.
Paste and send. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot and send. Ask follow-up questions to refine the answer.

Why this prompt works

The “Create a design system starter” prompt tells the assistant exactly what to hand back: token table; component list with rules; accessibility standards; and governance plan. It makes the assistant work through 5 steps in order, starting with "define design tokens: colour, type, spacing, radius, shadows", instead of jumping straight to an answer. Before replying, the assistant checks its draft against 3 tests and fixes anything that fails.

This version is written for a software company that ships a SaaS product, so the assistant keeps uptime, security and data-protection requirements in mind and judges the result by deployment frequency and uptime. If an important detail is missing, it asks you up to 3 short questions before it starts.

How to get the best answer

Fill every bracket with real detail: [DETAILS], [COLOURS, FONTS], [FRAMEWORK] should hold real names, numbers and dates, not placeholders.
Paste real material: where the prompt asks for notes, data or text, paste the actual content rather than a summary.
Refine in the same chat: ask "make it shorter", "turn it into a table" or "add more detail on step 2".
Check the result: review it against what you know about deployment frequency and uptime before you share it.

Other industries

Same prompt for other industries

The same create a design system starter prompt, rewritten for each industry.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Which AI assistant works best with the “Create a design system starter” prompt?

The “Create a design system starter” prompt works in any chat assistant and suits ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot best. Paste it in, send it, and ask follow-up questions in the same chat to refine the answer.

What do I fill in before sending the “Create a design system starter” prompt?

Replace the 3 highlighted brackets – [DETAILS], [COLOURS, FONTS], [FRAMEWORK] – with your own details. The more specific you are, the better the answer.

Is the “Create a design system starter” prompt only for IT & Software?

No. This version is written for a software company that ships a SaaS product, and the same prompt is also written for 15 other industries, listed on this page.

Is the “Create a design system starter” prompt free to use?

Yes. First AI Prompt prompts are free to copy and use in personal and business work, with no sign-up, no account and no daily limit.

Can I trust the answer the “Create a design system starter” prompt gives?

Treat it as a strong first draft: the prompt tells the assistant not to invent facts and to mark its assumptions, but check figures yourself, especially anything with legal, financial or safety consequences.

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