“Is This Intentional?” Using AI to Close the Gap Between Design and Code

Every product team has asked it: “Is this intentional?” Designs change after handoff, what gets built doesn’t match what was designed, and the differences usually show up in review or QA. AI coding tools compound the drift. When the design system leaves something out, the tools guess or build a near-copy of an existing component, and screens built by different teams start to look like they came from different products.

In this Lean BYTES, Matt Smith, Principal Product Design Consultant, shows how an agentic-first approach can close that gap. When design, documentation, and code work together, AI helps keep everything you ship consistent with your design system. Designers and engineers spend less time going back and forth and more time on the work that needs them.