Design system licenses: what an AI agent may reuse

An agent copies faster than anyone reads. In one task it can paste a component’s source, embed a font file and inline a dozen SVG icons, and each copy brings the terms of the part it came from. Nothing in that copy step reads the license for you. So the reading has to happen once, before the agent starts, and the result has to go into the rules it follows.

The Simbolik Design System’s licenses page shows how many parts one system can have. The design tokens, stylesheets, React components and checker are under the MIT License. The Figma file is under CC BY 4.0, which asks for credit. Three fonts come under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, and the icons, from Phosphor, under MIT. None of these covers the name or the logo, and the page tells you to replace the logo before you ship. Every design system has the same layers, whether or not it writes them down this plainly.

• MIT. Keep the copyright line and the license text in every copy or substantial portion. Nothing has to show on screen.
• Apache 2.0. Pass on a copy of the license, mark the files you changed, and keep the attributions in any NOTICE file.
• SIL Open Font License 1.1. Use the font in websites, apps and logos, and bundle it with software under its conditions. Do not sell the font by itself. A changed version may have to drop a Reserved Font Name.
• CC BY 4.0. Credit the work and its author, link the license, and say when you changed it.

• IBM Carbon publishes its packages, its icons included, under Apache 2.0. Its typeface, IBM Plex, is under the OFL with “Plex” as a Reserved Font Name. Its hosted MCP server has its own terms of use.
• Google Material publishes its icons under Apache 2.0.
• The GOV.UK Design System’s code is under MIT, and its site’s content under OGL v3.0, the UK government’s open content license. Its typeface, GDS Transport, is for services on service.gov.uk; services elsewhere are told to use another.
• Salesforce Lightning’s design tokens package points to a license file of its own instead of a standard license, and so does the deprecated Polaris React package. Shopify states no license for the Polaris web components on the pages this Site checked.

A license file of its own is common enough; it only means someone opens that file before an agent copies from the package.

Write the result into your guidance for agents as rules it can follow:

• Install, do not paste. Use components from the installed package, so their license files travel with them, rather than copying source from another system’s repository.
• Approved fonts and icons only. Name the sets the product may use, and keep each license file beside its files.
• No borrowed brands. Never another company’s logo, name or reserved typeface.
• Record what came from outside. Keep a file listing third-party code with its license, the way the Simbolik Design System’s Showroom lists the libraries it runs on.

Then ask for the same in any procurement brief for an AI-ready design system: a line on the license of each part, and what you own at the end. In a custom build the brand is yours outright and only the outside fonts and icons keep their makers’ terms; Work with Simbolik (opens in a new tab) covers that route. The best AI-ready design systems, ranked links each public system’s own pages, where its licenses live.