Teaching AI to Use Your Design System

AI can generate interfaces in seconds. But without awareness of your design system, it can also generate inconsistency, technical debt, and frontend chaos just as quickly.

Join Alex Andrade, Senior Design Engineer at 7shifts, for a practical talk and live demo exploring how AI is changing the relationship between design systems, prototyping, and frontend development.

At 7shifts, the design system “Sous Chef” connects a Figma UI kit with a React component library. Before AI, the workflow was relatively straightforward: designers created interfaces using the UI kit, and developers mapped those designs to production-ready React components.

Now, AI-assisted prototyping has changed the game.

Anyone can rapidly generate interfaces and working prototypes to validate ideas, but AI tools don’t inherently understand your company’s design system, component architecture, or frontend standards unless you explicitly teach them.

This creates a new set of challenges:

• Inconsistent UI patterns and design drift

• AI-generated code that reinvents existing components

• Bloated CSS and maintainability issues

• Growing technical debt between prototype and production

In this session, Alex will walk through how 7shifts is approaching this problem, bridging AI workflows with real-world design systems using Figma, React, and emerging tooling in the ecosystem like Storybook MCP and Figma Code Connect.

Whether you're a designer, frontend developer, product engineer, or just AI-curious, this talk offers a grounded look at what happens when AI enters the design-to-development workflow and how teams can keep things scalable, maintainable, and aligned.

About the Speaker

Alex Andrade is a Senior Design Engineer at 7shifts and the founding architect behind Sous Chef, the company’s design system connecting Figma and React. His work focuses on design systems, frontend architecture, developer experience, and building scalable UI workflows for modern product teams.

Schedule

6:00–6:30 — Arrival, mingling, and refreshments

6:30–7:30 — Tech Talk + Demo

7:30–8:30 — Networking

Event Sponsor

This event is sponsored by 7shifts.

7shifts is a restaurant team management platform designed to help restaurants simplify scheduling, payroll, communication, hiring, and labor operations. Used by thousands of restaurants across North America, 7shifts builds tools that help restaurant teams operate more efficiently while improving the employee experience.

Important Notes for RSVPs

RSVP Commitment

If you RSVP and can no longer attend, please update your RSVP at least 24 hours in advance. No-shows may affect your ability to attend future TechTank events.

Photography & Video Disclaimer

By attending, you acknowledge that photos and/or videos may be taken and used for future promotional content. If you’d prefer not to be included, please inform the TechTank organizers when you arrive.

About TechTank

TechTank is a Toronto tech community bringing developers, designers, and builders together through talks, workshops, and community events.

Join our vibrant community for the latest updates and continued discussions: https://linktr.ee/techtankto

Interested in Supporting TechTank?

If you or your company are interested in sponsoring a TechTank event or supporting the community, we’d love to hear from you.

📩 Email us: techtankto@gmail.com