Scope Boundaries

IDL governs design intent as data and the pipeline that transforms it into platform artifacts. It does not govern everything that a design system touches. Scope boundaries are normative negations: constructs or concerns that fall outside them are neither valid nor invalid in IDL terms — they are ungoverned. Implementing them in ways that conflict with IDL-governed concerns is a design system decision, not a specification violation.

Outside IDL Scope

• Pixel-level rendering decisions, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel behavior.
• Accessibility implementation: ARIA roles, focus management, screen reader semantics. IDL governs the specification contract; accessibility implementation is the responsibility of the platform layer.
• Platform-specific interaction patterns, gesture recognizers, and haptic feedback.
• Content strategy, copy guidelines, and localization.
• Visual aesthetics of any specific design system instance built on IDL — IDL governs structure and constraint, not aesthetic expression.
• Design tooling workflows beyond the Figma emitter output contract.
• Application architecture, routing, and state management.

Boundary Rationale

Scope clarity prevents specification bloat. A specification that attempts to govern everything produces a system where no single rule is clearly authoritative. By declaring explicit scope boundaries, IDL makes its governance claims precise and its conformance criteria tractable. Concerns outside the boundary are delegated to the appropriate authority — platform specifications, accessibility standards, or the consuming organisation's own governance process.

Boundary Evolution

Scope boundaries may be narrowed (more items delegated outside IDL) or widened (new concerns brought within governance) through the RFC process. Widening the scope boundary to include a new concern is treated as an additive change if no existing conformant IDL source would become non-conformant. Narrowing scope — removing something previously governed — requires a deprecation period and constitutes a breaking change.