Walkthrough
Resolution in Five Minutes
No theory. One repository, six commands, the full loop from install to explanation.
1. Install once
npm install -D ds-runtime
Pre-1.0, so install from a packed tarball or the GitHub release branch until it's on public npm:
npm install -D github:jon4ohio/design-system-runtime#release/gate2-packaging-rc1
2. See what it found
npx ds-runtime list-components
Every component the runtime discovered in the repository, listed once, with no ranking or guessing involved.
3. Resolve
npx ds-runtime resolve Button
Not a search result. The authoritative implementation, its tokens, its stories, its documentation, and its tests, all confirmed against each other.
4. Explain
npx ds-runtime explain Button
The reasoning behind step 3: why this implementation, what it links to, and what it excluded along the way.
5. Try something that isn't there
npx ds-runtime resolve Badge
If your repository has no authoritative Badge, this is where the runtime says so and stops. It won't hand back a near-miss component and call it Badge. That refusal is the feature.
6. Check the whole repository
npx ds-runtime validate
npx ds-runtime doctor
validate checks the repository against the Retrieval Contract. doctor reports orphaned components, unresolved aliases, and drift between design tool and code.
Done
Six commands. One repository. Nothing invented.
Prefer to connect an agent directly instead of typing these yourself? npx ds-runtime mcp --root . exposes the same resolve, explain, validate, and doctor calls over MCP. Same runtime, different transport.