Case study

AI Token Governance & Vibe-Code Audit Engine

Stop LLM UI drift with DESIGN.md contracts, Paper MCP, and a human-in-the-loop /audit triage flow.

Role: Product Architect & Systems Lead
Timeline: 2026

DESIGN.md Paper MCP Cursor React Node

0 Token Drift

Human-in-the-Loop Triage

Executive Summary

Cursor and other LLM agents ship features fast, and leave behind hardcoded hex values, broken slots, and one-off component overrides.

This project wires three layers together: DESIGN.md as the machine-readable source of truth, Paper over MCP as the visual sandbox, and an /audit UI so humans decide Adjust, Extend, or Skip before code changes land.

The System Architecture

Design, specs, and production stay on one contract:

Paper.design: Visual soft-lock via local MCP
DESIGN.md: YAML frontmatter tokens + prose component rules
src/ds/: Production UI on tokens.css and shared components

Read Order & Governance Rules

audit.md: Playbook for triage actions and governance rules.
DESIGN.md: SOT for YAML tokens and prose component contracts.
src/ds/*: React implementation of those contracts.

Agentic Triage Engine

The /audit UI lists findings for review instead of silent visual diffs:

Adjust (Immediate): Runs scripts/apply-audit.mjs to snap product UI to library tokens.
Extend (Queued): Writes audit-pending.json and queues component requests into Paper via local MCP.
Exception / Skip: Logs why a non-standard override stays.