A design system sounds like something you earn later — a luxury for companies big enough to have a design-systems team. For a startup that's exactly backwards. A right-sized system is what lets three people ship a coherent product fast, without re-deciding the same button padding on every screen. The trap isn't building one too early; it's building a heavyweight one you don't need. The answer is to start tiny and grow it only as it earns its keep.
Start with tokens, not components
Before any component library, agree on the primitives everything else is built from — the design tokens:
A small color palette with defined roles (primary, surface, text, danger).
A type scale — a handful of sizes, not a dozen.
