// speaking
I speak at meetups and conferences about building design systems, and about teaching AI agents to use them. Here are the recordings.
· Tech Tank · Toronto
AI can generate interfaces in seconds, and without awareness of your design system it generates inconsistency just as fast. A talk and live demo on how 7shifts taught AI agents to use Sous Chef instead of improvising around it.
· Saskatoon Dev Talks at 7shifts HQ · Saskatoon
The story of Sous Chef, the 7shifts design system, and what it takes to build one from the ground up.
· Saskatoon Dev Talks · Saskatoon
My first talk. What legacy code really is, how it differs from bad code, and how to leave behind a good code legacy.
Docs written for agents, MCP servers, and keeping AI-generated UI on-system.
Tokens, theming, dark mode, and growing a system from a handful of components to 100+.
Visual testing with Chromatic, testing strategy, and making the right way the easy way.
Alex Andrade leads the design system team at 7shifts and created Sous Chef, the company’s design system of 100+ components. Alex writes and speaks about design systems that humans and AI agents get right, and founded the Saskatoon React Meetup.
Alex Andrade is a frontend engineer with more than 15 years of experience who leads the design system team at 7shifts in Saskatoon, Canada. Alex created Sous Chef, the 7shifts design system: a React, TypeScript and Storybook foundation that grew into a themeable system of 100+ components, with Chromatic visual tests in CI.
Alex’s current work focuses on semantic tokens, dark mode, and teaching AI agents to build with a design system instead of around it. Alex founded the Saskatoon React Meetup, the first React meetup in the prairies, and writes at alexandrade.dev.
Alex Andrade builds design systems that humans and AI agents get right. Originally from Brazil, Alex spent four years at TOTVS, the largest tech company in Latin America, before moving to Saskatoon, Canada in 2019 to join 7shifts, which builds team management software for restaurants. Over more than 15 years, Alex has gone from enterprise ERP software to leading migrations from legacy PHP to modern React apps.
In 2022 Alex joined the 7shifts Developer Experience team and led Sous Chef, the company’s design system, from the ground up: a React, TypeScript and Storybook foundation that turned a fragmented set of components into a themeable system of 100+ components, with Chromatic visual tests running in CI. That work led to a dedicated design system team, which Alex now leads, focused on semantic tokens, dark mode, and teaching AI agents to use the system through agent-ready docs and MCP.
Alex founded the Saskatoon React Meetup, the first React meetup in the prairies, leads frontend guilds on React, TypeScript and accessibility, and has spoken at Tech Tank Toronto and Saskatoon Dev Talks. Outside of work, Alex is a father of four who spends weekends camping across the prairies and woodworking.
// invite me
I'm happy to talk about design systems, AI and MCP, in person or remote. Send me a message.
