Living style guide

A living style guide is a style guide generated automatically from production code, so the documentation can never drift from the real components. Open the page, and you're looking at the actual button — same CSS, same React, same accessibility behaviour — not a screenshot of one.

The idea, popularised by Nicole Sullivan and Brad Frost, is the foundation of how modern design systems document themselves. Tools like Storybook, Zeroheight and Supernova all serve the same goal: keep designers, engineers and product owners looking at the same source of truth. If your "style guide" is a PDF, it stopped being accurate the day it shipped.

Related: Style guide · Design system · Component library · Storybook