A Design System MCP Built on Your System, Not Figma's API
Headway is a full-cycle product studio that builds custom design system MCP servers. Your tokens, your real component APIs, and your standards, served to every AI tool your crew uses. Built in three weeks by the people who build design systems, and yours outright when it ships. Full source code, no license, no vendor lock-in.
Before Design System MCP
With Design System MCP
Built by design systems people, not a generic dev shop
Design systems are one of the four areas Headway works in, and we've been building them for product teams for years. Our base system, Shipwright Pro, runs on a three-layer token architecture with 30+ components. When we taught Claude to re-skin it through the Figma MCP, applying a new client brand went from a half day to two to four hours.
Every MCP build is led by two people who do this work every day:
Billy Sweetman, Head of Design
Billy runs Headway's design practice and the design system side of every build: auditing your Figma libraries, token architecture, and naming, then deciding what the MCP should enforce. He co-hosts Intent & Craft, our podcast on design craft.
Tim Gremore, Development Lead
Tim builds the server itself: token resolution, component lookup, Figma-to-code mapping, and drift detection, tested against tickets from your real backlog. He writes about the engineering side of AI-ready design systems on our blog.
Billy and Tim also teach this in public.
Watch the Design System MCPs live stream or read their take on DESIGN.md vs. a design system MCP.
Your own MCP in 3 weeks
Your team keeps shipping while we build in parallel. Total lift on your side is a handful of hours across three weeks.
Week 1
Chart your system
We map your design system end to end, including Figma libraries, token architecture, code components, naming, and conventions, and quantify exactly where drift is entering and what it costs you. This drift baseline becomes the number your results are measured against, and the audit is yours to keep regardless of what happens next.
Weeks 2-3
Build your MCP
We build your one-of-one MCP server: token resolution that returns your real values, component lookup that returns your actual APIs and variants, and your naming and accessibility standards encoded as rules. Then we test it against tickets from your actual backlog, not demos.
Week 3 and Beyond
Launch and tune
Your team installs the server across Claude Code, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible tool, then ships real tickets through it in a live workshop. You get full source, documentation, and a governance playbook. For 90 days we refine resolvers, add tools, and fix edge cases, then re-run the drift audit and hand you the before and after.
Why people love working with Headway
"Headway, did such a great job at helping us build a core design system that we can now use in future parts of our application.
I was excited to work with folks I trust. And Headway delivered just as I knew they would. Feedback from customers with the new additions has been fantastic."
Adam Larson
Co-Founder & CTO
It didn't feel like working with an outside agency. Leading design teams for 20 years, having that kind of feeling versus a client-company relationship, was a breath of fresh air."
Todd Kamps
Head of Design
Three ways to work together
Start wherever your system is today. Each step stands on its own, and each one feeds the next.
Design System Consulting Call
$500 for a 30-minute working session
Agentic Design System Roadmap
$10,000 per platform, 1 week
Custom Design System MCP Build
$25,500 fixed, 3 weeks
Let's get to work
Book a free scoping call. Tell us where your design system stands today and we'll point you at the right starting place: a working session to pressure-test a decision you're already facing, a roadmap to plan the fixes, or the full build. If none of the three is right for you, we'll say so.
FAQs
How we work
An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server connects AI coding tools to outside context. A design system MCP gives tools like Claude Code and Cursor your real tokens, component APIs, props, and standards on demand, so the code they write uses your system instead of guessing at it.
Yes. Headway is a full-cycle product studio, and custom design system MCP builds are one of our core design systems services. We map your system, build a one-of-one MCP server on it, and roll it out across your AI tools in three weeks.
Yes, outright. You get the full source, documentation, and a governance playbook. There's no license, no subscription, and no vendor dependency. Your crew can run, change, and extend the server without us.
Both. We audit your Figma libraries and token architecture in week one, and the server maps Figma frames to the correct code components through your library structure, so agents get the right component for every node instead of guessing from pixels. Drift detection then checks shipped UI against that source of truth.
Billy Sweetman, our Head of Design, leads the design system side: auditing your libraries and deciding what the MCP enforces. Tim Gremore, our Development Lead, builds and tests the server. You work directly with both.
A custom build is $25,500, fixed, over three weeks. If you want a plan first, the Agentic Design System Roadmap is $10,000 per platform and takes one week. A 30-minute consulting call is $500, and the first scoping call is free.
About 3.5 hours across the three weeks. Your crew keeps shipping while we build in parallel.
Claude Code, Cursor, and any other tool that supports MCP.
It depends on how custom your system is. Platforms like zeroheight and Supernova are a good fit if you want your documentation and tokens managed in their product. Open-source MCPs are a fast way to experiment. A custom build makes sense when your components, naming, and rules are specific enough that generic tools keep getting them wrong, and when you want to own the server outright. If none of the three is right for you, we'll say so on the scoping call.
DESIGN.md is a portable file that gives any agent your tokens and visual rules. An MCP gives agents working in your stack your real component APIs and changelogs. Most teams benefit from both, with the MCP reading from DESIGN.md. Tim and Billy break it down in DESIGN.md vs. a design system MCP.
No. If your tokens or components need work, the Roadmap tells you what to fix first and in what order, and that plan is yours to keep whether or not you build.
Still have questions?
We understand that every person and problem is unique. Let us know what else is on your mind.
Relevant resources
