--- title: Atlassian’s DESIGN.md is here: what we learned testing... description: Atlassian's design system team tested Google's DESIGN.md format — a portable Markdown file describing brand and UI patterns — against their own MCP server and... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-s-design-md-is-here-what-we-learned-testing-portable-design-context-in-practice-nnf3qta24 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Atlassian’s DESIGN.md is here: what we learned testing portable design context in practice | daily.dev og:description: Atlassian's design system team tested Google's DESIGN.md format — a portable Markdown file describing brand and UI patterns — against their own MCP server and... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-s-design-md-is-here-what-we-learned-testing-portable-design-context-in-practice-nnf3qta24 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/nnF3QTA24.png og:image:alt: Atlassian’s DESIGN.md is here: what we learned testing portable design context in practice og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Atlassian’s DESIGN.md is here: what we learned testing portable design context in practice **[Atlassian](https://daily.dev/sources/atlassian)** · 11 min read · 2 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Atlassian's design system team tested Google's DESIGN.md format — a portable Markdown file describing brand and UI patterns — against their own MCP server and AI skills. While DESIGN.md successfully transformed generic AI-generated UI into recognizably Atlassian interfaces during a one-shot keynote demo, it underperformed in production scenarios: it consumed ~92% more tokens, had 2.7x higher token variance, and only provided ~30% of design system context compared to ~80% via MCP. Key limitations include loading all context at once (no on-demand fetching), forced truncation of component guidance, and a tendency to make agents re-implement components rather than import existing ones. DESIGN.md is most valuable for quick prototyping, cross-platform portability, design tool interoperability, and customer theming — not as a replacement for richer MCP-based tooling. Atlassian has published their own DESIGN.md files publicly and is contributing feedback to the open standard. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@starfallcodes** · 0 upvotes > What a great idea! ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Teaching AI to speak our design language](https://daily.dev/posts/teaching-ai-to-speak-our-design-language-qcj2tdmqh) · Atlassian · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Atlassian Design System: Building the context engine for the AI era](https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-design-system-building-the-context-engine-for-the-ai-era-tbqmqatwp) · Atlassian · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#design-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/design-systems), [#vibe-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/vibe-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-s-design-md-is-here-what-we-learned-testing-portable-design-context-in-practice-nnf3qta24) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Atlassian’s DESIGN.md is here: what we learned testing portable design context in practice","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-s-design-md-is-here-what-we-learned-testing-portable-design-context-in-practice-nnf3qta24","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-s-design-md-is-here-what-we-learned-testing-portable-design-context-in-practice-nnf3qta24"},"datePublished":"2026-06-15T16:12:18.638Z","dateModified":"2026-06-17T06:21:48.420Z","description":"Atlassian's design system team tested Google's DESIGN.md format — a portable Markdown file describing brand and UI patterns — against their own MCP server and...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d170f8f33c2a9b60baf7298cd298e561?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d170f8f33c2a9b60baf7298cd298e561?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Atlassian","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Atlassian","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/44750d8e66de4411bb477159b321bb43","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/atlassian"},"commentCount":1,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-s-design-md-is-here-what-we-learned-testing-portable-design-context-in-practice-nnf3qta24","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}],"keywords":"mcp,ai-coding,design-systems,vibe-coding","timeRequired":"PT11M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Atlassian","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/atlassian"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Atlassian’s DESIGN.md is here: what we learned testing portable design context in practice"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/atlassian-s-design-md-is-here-what-we-learned-testing-portable-design-context-in-practice-nnf3qta24","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"What a great idea!","datePublished":"2026-06-17T04:40:44.568Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/nnF3QTA24#c-zW2spVkCb","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Starfall :D","url":"https://daily.dev/starfallcodes","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--4xoTqFbk--/f_auto/v1786806197/avatars/avatar_ecPDW57nUVRidLxwsxruz?_a=BAMAMicg0"}}]} ```