Design
Twenty minutes of every design review goes on finding the file
The agenda written the day before, with last review's unresolved threads at the top.
What the worker does
An AI worker prepares design review by assembling the agenda before the meeting. Using the Figma, Linear and Google Calendar connections, it lists each file up for review, the task it belongs to, the comment threads still unresolved from last time, and what changed in the file since the previous session. The critique itself, and every decision that comes out of it, belongs to the people in the room.
- Runs
- The day before review
- Connections
- Figma, Linear, Google Calendar
- Never automated
- The critique
Reviews start cold
Everyone arrives without having looked. The first twenty minutes go on establishing which file is current, what was decided last time, and whether the change in front of everyone is a response to that decision or an unrelated iteration. Then the good conversation gets thirty minutes instead of fifty.
None of that setup requires design judgement. It requires somebody to open four files and read the comment history the afternoon before.
What the agenda contains, in order
| Item | Why it is in that position |
|---|---|
| Unresolved from last review | Decisions that were deferred are the ones that get deferred again |
| Files up this session | Each with its linked task and the designer presenting |
| Changed since last time | So the room knows whether it is looking at an iteration or a new direction |
| Open comment threads | Grouped by file, with the question each thread is stuck on |
| Decisions needed | The explicit list, so the meeting can be judged on whether it made them |
The details that make the agenda usable
Threads that were never answered
A comment nobody replied to for three weeks is a decision that quietly did not happen. Surfacing those first is most of the value of the agenda.
Named presenters
Pulled from the linked task owner, so nobody discovers in the meeting that the person who was going to walk through the work is not there.
Calendar reality
Google Calendar tells the worker who is actually in the session, which changes what is worth putting on the list.
After the review
The decisions get written into the task as comments by the people who made them. Assigning a second task to the worker to reconcile the agenda against what was decided is possible, but most teams find that the writing-down is the part that has to stay human, because a decision nobody typed is a decision nobody made.
Questions people ask
+Can the worker see comments inside Figma files?
It reads file state and comment threads through the Figma connection, which is authorised once for the organisation and stored server-side. What it reports back is a list with links, delivered as a comment on the Polaris task.
+What if our design work lives in another tool?
The connection catalog is fixed: Figma is the design tool in it. Teams using something else usually keep the review task and its linked files in Polaris and give the worker Google Drive, which covers exported files and written specs.
+Does this replace a design ops person?
No. It removes one recurring chore from whoever currently does it, which in most teams under fifty people is a designer doing it at 6pm the night before. Facilitating the review and holding the standard is a different job.
+How far ahead should the agenda run?
A day is usually right. Any earlier and files change after the agenda is written; any later and nobody reads it before the meeting. The task can be scheduled so a cloud machine builds it overnight.
Related
Design work an AI teammate can take, and the part it cannot
Five jobs around the work, none of them the work itself. Taste stays where it belongs.
Is this final? Asked for the fourth time this month
A completeness check before build starts, so the question is answered before it is asked.
The component was renamed and the documentation was not
A weekly drift report between the component library and the documentation that describes it.
Connect Figma to Polaris
A Figma token belongs to a person, and Polaris shows you which person it verified, which is the detail worth checking before you store it.
Connect Google Calendar to Polaris
Scheduling is the one thing an assistant is asked for first, and it is the one connection still waiting on Google sign-in.
Hire an AI project coordinator
The unglamorous half of running projects, done every week without anyone having to be the person who nags.
Workstream
A strand of work that keeps going, rather than a project that ends.