Skip to content
Recursica

What is Recursica?

Recursica is an open-source design system architecture designed specifically for agencies and product teams who build software across diverse platforms, clients, and technical stacks.

Instead of forcing teams to adopt another rigid, framework-specific component library, Recursica provides a strict design-to-code contract that guarantees brand consistency from the first design exploration to final deployment.

Core Components of the System

Recursica is built around five modular tools and integrations that solve the most critical pain points in the design and development lifecycle:

1. Theme Forge

A visual theme editor and token generator. Designers compose custom color palettes, typography ramps, spacing steps, and elevation curves in a live browser environment, then export them as portable, DTCG-standard design token JSON.

2. Figma Kit

A versioned, repo-backed Figma variables template. Teams can sync their Figma variables natively with the design token JSON generated by Theme Forge, keeping the design workspace and the codebase in perfect alignment.

3. UI Adapters

A strict wrapper layer for popular UI libraries like Mantine (React), MUI, and Carbon. UI Adapters lock in your custom design tokens at the component level, preventing style overrides or unauthorized modifications.

4. Recursica MCP

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that feeds your design system guidelines, component specifications, and token mappings directly to AI coding assistants (like Gemini or Claude) so they can build on-brand code on their first try.

5. Knowledge Lake

A research synthesis framework. n8n workflows and Recursica skills transform user research and interview transcripts into a queryable knowledge base where every claim and insight is traceable back to its source quote.

The Philosophy: Override, Don’t Corrupt

Recursica is built on the philosophy of strict boundaries:

  • Design Tokens Carry the Weight: If a component needs to look different, the change should occur by tuning design tokens in Theme Forge or Figma, not by writing ad-hoc, one-off CSS overrides.
  • AI-Ready Guardrails: By providing a highly standardized component syntax and feeding it to AI assistants through the MCP server, Recursica ensures that generated code is clean, consistent, and ready for production.