The day our design system component library died (literally crashed the repo)

Last Tuesday, our team's entire component library got corrupted because one developer pushed a massive SVG file without checking the size limits. I'm talking a 15MB icon set that somehow made it past code review. It took us 3 full days to rebuild 47 components from scratch because the git history was completely borked. The worst part? Our design system documentation wasn't backed up separately, so we lost all our usage notes too. Has anyone else dealt with a catastrophe like this where one bad commit took down everything?

2 comments

2 Comments

miller.paul2d ago

Why is it always the one thing you think is fine that ends up breaking everything? This reminds me of how people store all their photos on one phone without backing them up. You think it's safe until the phone dies and poof, ten years of memories gone. The same thing happens with code. We put all our trust in one repo, one git history, one system and forget that it's just software. Software can break. It's not a vault, it's a fragile mess. You learned the hard way that you need copies in different places. Spread your important stuff out so one bad move can't take it all down. That's just basic sense for anything you care about.

james_butler2d ago

Wait, did you guys lose all the usage notes because the design system docs were actually stored INSIDE the component library repo? That seems like a really risky setup to begin with, most teams keep their documentation in a separate system like Notion or Confluence. Rebuilding 47 components from scratch sounds rough, but at least you can use this as a chance to add some proper boundaries on file sizes and make sure your docs live somewhere safe going forward.