Today, having a design system is table stakes for organizations of all sizes. Many early stage design systems focus on documentation and are largely owned by the design team. As digital production evolves, design systems must provide value beyond documenting UI elements—today’s design systems should empower entire organizations to collaborate, iterate, and ship production-ready experiences with higher quality and efficiency.
Zeroheight has played an important role in helping many design teams get their documentation off the ground. It’s a natural starting point for design-led teams beginning to formalize their systems.
That said, as systems mature and the need for cross-functional collaboration increases, the gap between documentation and real digital production starts to show. That’s where the difference between Knapsack and Zeroheight becomes clear. Zeroheight is a good option for small design teams looking to document and share guidelines, but Knapsack is built for cross-functional collaboration across an entire organization and goes far beyond static design documentation, democratizing the digital production process while ensuring consistency.
Why Documentation Alone Falls Short
Design systems can take many forms, but most have been documentation sites built as a source of truth by and for designers, often to the exclusion of developers, product teams, marketing teams, and others who work with digital UIs. This documentation as a design system (DADS) brings value but it does not deliver what most organizations need. Design documentation is only half the story. Modern digital production needs to be rooted in code. When documentation is disconnected from real code, teams still face the friction, slow iteration, and inconsistencies they aimed to eliminate.
This is where Zeroheight’s approach shows its limits. While it is great for creating designer-friendly documentation, it lacks deep design-to-code integration, live prototyping with real components, automated documentation, and robust governance features—all of which are critical for scaling design systems.
If organizations want to realize the true value of a design system, they must connect design to code, automate documentation, and scale design system use. That’s what Knapsack does—It creates a consolidated digital production operations platform where design, code, and documentation are connected to create a single, living system.
Knapsack vs. Zeroheight: Key Differences
The table below highlights the differences between Knapsack & Zeroheight.
The Next Evolution of Design Systems
Ongoing digital transformation, the rise of generative AI, and resource constraints demand design systems that scale.
Two of the most important features a design system must evolve to include are:
- The ability to create a System of Record (SOR) for digital production and AI
- Live-code prototyping that empowers broader use of the design system.
Creating a Digital Production System of Record
A SOR is a database or application that stores and manages important information for an organization. It's a key data source for mission-critical information. Familiar examples of SORs include CRMs or ERPs.
Knapsack creates a SOR for digital production by pulling design and development data into one consolidated platform and establishing a one-to-one, dynamic connection between design and code. This one-to-one connection creates a codified data set that can be used to feed and train brand-specific LLMs that, in turn, power generative AI and allow your organization to work towards hyper-personalization of digital experiences.
A digital production SOR is essential to scale your design system instead of limiting its usefulness to a subset of designers and developers. Establishing Knapsack as your SOR lets you democratize design of digital experiences through live-code prototyping.
Prototyping with Production-Ready Components
Prototyping is one of the biggest differentiators between Knapsack and Zeroheight. While Zeroheight does have some limited prototyping capabilities, it relies on embedding Figma, Sketch, or code snippets. These are still just previews—they don’t reflect the actual behavior of live components. In contrast, Knapsack enables teams to prototype with real, production-ready components allowing digital teams to create, iterate, test, and deploy with confidence.
Choosing a Design System That Supports What’s Next
Design systems shouldn’t just document your work—they should drive it. A design system that does not create a SOR that empowers cross-functional collaboration, accelerates design and development, supports AI-readiness initiatives and eventually powers generative models is not going to meet the needs of large organizations today or going forward.
If you need a digital production platform that can take you beyond documentation, sign up for our weekly live demo to see how Knapsack can help your organization build the digital production infrastructure it needs.”
