Is your design system drifting across surfaces?

The problem we hit

We kept rebuilding the same design system. Once in CSS, again in the CMS, again in the editor, again in a component library — and every copy drifted from the others. A colour that was correct in one place was subtly wrong in the next, and nobody could say which one was the truth.

The usual answer is a token pipeline bolted to one framework. That works until you need the same brand somewhere the framework does not go.

So we wrote down the grammar instead.

What it is

A JSONM payload describes a brand as a strictly validated JSON document — governed tokens, fixed font roles, WCAG-aware semantic colours, and mode-keyed appearances for light and dark.

Authored once, it applies anywhere that implements the spec. Not with pixel-identical output everywhere, but with the same brand intent everywhere. Where a target genuinely differs, that difference is expressed as a transpiler target rather than by branching the schema — so the payload stays one thing.

The repository carries the canonical v1 specification, JSON Schema 2020-12, a reference CSS custom-property token map, a reference PHP implementation, conformance fixtures with byte-identical golden outputs, ten packaged archetypes, and experimental TypeScript adapters for Tailwind and Storybook.

Where it is

JSONM is an early public specification. The v1 style-definition contract is stable. Package releases and framework adapters are still experimental while adoption feedback comes in, and registry publication is not yet the canonical adoption path — the specification, schemas, reference source and conformance fixtures in the repository are the public artifact today.

It is Apache-2.0, created by Stanton Brooks, and owned and stewarded by Active Twist.

How we use it

JSONM is the substrate underneath nearly everything we make. Every Active Twist product depends on it except AmphionAgent, which shipped before JSONM existed.

• MyronCMS consumes JSONM definitions as its design-system layer — the site you are reading is rendered from one.
• Onyx Writer is themed by JSONM, with bundled archetypes and local imports.
• The JMD Storybook showcase — JSONM Mutable Design — exists to prove the claim honestly: swap one payload and a full component environment changes, with no component source touched.

That reuse is the argument. A grammar that only its author uses is a format; one that four products share is a substrate.