u/bink-1567

We're about to redo a frontend and keep arguing about whether the design language has to be locked first or if you can revamp screens in parallel and extract the system as you go. Product has chat/messaging plus some denser dashboard-adjacent UI, so consistency starts breaking fast once a few flows diverge.

Curious how people have sequenced this in practice. Did you start with tokens/components and freeze them early, or ship a few key flows first and only formalize the language after patterns settled? Also what usually bites you later - type/spacing drift, component variants exploding, or states that never got designed?

Not fishing for free work, just trying to avoid the classic "pretty screens, no system" trap before we commit more time.