Management Masthead Left Shapes
Governance

Keep your design system current and under control

Decide what gets published, make approved changes clear, and help teams avoid building with outdated components, tokens, and guidance.

Management Masthead Center (2)

Governance / The challenge

Your system evolved. Teams are still building from the old version.

You’ve approved the changes, but outdated components and tokens still turn up in QA or shipped code. Teams keep building from the version they know, leaving you to catch the mismatch later.

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Approved changes do not reach everyone

You publish the update and hope it lands. Teams miss it and carry on with the version they know.

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You deprecated it. It’s still shipping

You replaced that spacing token months ago, but new screens still use the old value. Marking it deprecated hasn’t stopped teams building with it.

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Problems surface after the work is done

QA catches the mismatch after the work is built — or it reaches production first. Either way, work that looked finished needs another round of changes.

Governance controls / Governance controls

Make it clear what teams should build with

With zeroheight, unfinished work stays separate from published guidance. Control what goes live and make approved guidance available where teams and agents work, so they have a clear version to build from.

Quarter Circle
Hidden New (1)

Control what goes live, and when

Make progress visible with page and component statuses. Draft privately, gather input, and publish when the work is ready.

Secure Releases

Make releases easy to follow

Publish versioned releases so teams can see what changed and which guidance to use.
User roles and email addresses displayed in a clean interface with three individuals: Anna as Admin and Owner, Daniel as Viewer, and Robert as Editor.

Roles, permissions, and agent access

Set who can view, contribute to, and manage the system, and control which guidance agents can access.

Governance / System oversight

See what needs attention before it holds teams back

Track component and page status across your system. Follow changes and reviews, and find gaps in design, code, and documentation.

User interface design showcasing various interactive components, including buttons, checkboxes, an icon button, and text input fields, with status indicators for readiness.

Track components across tools

See each component’s status across design, code, and documentation, including what’s ready, in progress, missing, or deprecated.

Make page readiness clear

Use page statuses to show editors and contributors what’s ready and where work is still needed.

Activity Feedslider

Keep up with changes and reviews

Follow updates, comments, review requests, and release notifications in one activity feed.

Tokens Managerslider

Keep tokens aligned across design and code

Keep tokens in sync between Figma and code with fewer manual updates.

Dashboard display showing missing blocks with counts: 22 pages lacking a design block and 24 pages lacking a code block, along with management options.

Find missing design and code references

Spot pages without design or code blocks so your team can see where documentation is incomplete.

MCP For Auditing V1 Light Govpage

Check work against your standards with AI

Audit documentation with the zeroheight AI assistant, or connect agents through MCP to check design and code against approved guidance.

Smart Recsslider

Prioritise what needs updating

Use recommendations to identify stale guidance and maintenance tasks, helping your team decide what to tackle next.

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From the Wild West to Clear Design Principles: How Sage rolled out a rebrand at scale – in just 30 minutes
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Governance / Governance for AI workflows

Help teams build on-system with AI

Give AI agents current components, tokens, and guidance so they can build within your design system’s standards instead of filling gaps with guesses. zeroheight lets your team govern that context, helping more people across your organisation build on-system faster.
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FAQs

  • What is design system governance?

    Design system governance is the ownership, rules, and workflows used to manage changes to a design system. It defines who can contribute, how changes get reviewed and published, and how teams retire outdated guidance and check that the system stays useful.

  • What should a design system governance process include?
  • Why do enterprise design systems need governance?
  • How does zeroheight support design system governance?
  • How does design system governance help teams using AI agents?
  • How can teams reduce the use of deprecated components and outdated design tokens?
  • Is design system governance the same as security and access control?
  • How do you govern a design system without slowing teams down?