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00:01 Design systems and context engineering are powering new approaches for AI agents. This is gonna change the way that software is getting built. Have you ever wondered exactly what design systems are? How AI agents are making use of them? Or how context engineering plays together with all of these technologies? Well, let's talk about it. Design system is like a big set of rules and building blocks.
00:31 That let people create things like software apps and websites in a consistent and uniform way. It includes things like fonts, UI components, colors to use, and rules for spacing and layout. The design system is like a Lego set with instructions. The instructions are the design system and the set of rules that comprise the design systems. The building blocks, the Lego blocks, are actually the design system components, like the fonts, UI components, colors, and rules of spacing that we mentioned earlier.
01:07 The finished Lego set is your app or website. So instead of everyone making things differently, a design system helps teams build things that deliver familiar experience, that are easy to use, no matter who made it. Now that we've covered design systems, let's move on to context engineering. In its purest form, context engineering is the way we teach an AI agent.
01:32 What it needs to know before it starts working on something. It's a way to provide the AI with the information it needs, to be successful. MCP or Model Context Protocol. It's an industry standard way of sharing that information to an AI. It's formatted in such a way that the information is easily consumed by the AI. Agentic AI is AI that ultimately can make decisions based on the information it has, choose what it's going to do, and use tools along the way to get real work done.
02:07 Now let's see how this all comes together and why it's changing how most software apps are built. Let's say someone needs to build a website. The website has to follow the design system's rules and components, but let's say they're not an expert in the design systems. With MCP connected to an agent, providing guidance and... tools. The user can describe.
02:40 What they need to the AI, and the AI agent will follow all of the rules for the design system and ask for a prototype implementation. The AI agent knows how to build the website. But since it's been instructed to use. Design System MCP, it goes and gets the information it needs to be certain that it's building things absolutely correctly. To go back to the Lego analogy, without the use of MCP it's like the AI agent is building the Lego set from memorized instructions.
03:13 MCP gives the actual instructions so that the AI agents can check its work. The combination of design systems, context engineering, and intelligent AI agents will help define the next generation of software development. Are you considering using AI agents for future work? Or have you already built something really cool? We'd really love to hear about it in the comments below.
MCP gives the actual instructions so that the AI agents can check its work.