An agent-readable design system is a brand design system published in a form a machine consumes directly: the values for color, type, spacing, radius, and motion, plus the written rules for using them. A design system an agent reads before it builds.
Why it matters
Design systems are written for people. A slide deck, a shared component library, a page of dos and don'ts, none of which an agent building an interface for your brand can open.
So it approximates. A blue that is close, a typeface that happens to be available, spacing that looks about right, and the result is recognizably not yours in ways that are irritating to point at and slow to fix.
Two things close the gap: the values in a standard machine format so a build tool can consume them without a translation step, and the rules in plain prose so a model knows which value belongs where.
How Jinn treats it
Jinn publishes both halves. Design tokens come back as DTCG JSON, a standard token format rather than a shape invented for one vendor: colors, typography, spacing, radius, and motion, each one named instead of guessed.
Alongside them sits a DESIGN.md, an agent-readable design system in prose: the rules a model needs in order to apply those values the way the brand actually uses them. Together they are the difference between an agent approximating a look and an agent building in it.
Design tokens and DESIGN.md both appear in the public gateway tool reference. See it
Related terms
Rules a machine can follow, not a deck it cannot open.
Named values plus the prose that governs them, published for the agents doing the building. See what the gateway serves.