Four rules borrowed intact.

The practice. A kolam artist does not improvise the composition and then fit dots to it. She lays the pulli first — a count, a shape, a spacing — and the drawing that follows is constrained by that grid absolutely. The grid is not a guide. It is the specification.

The rule. Every geometric value in this system is expressed as a function of the pitch P and the loop radius r = P/2. A value that cannot be written that way does not enter the system.

Why it holds. Most design systems have a spacing scale and a radius scale that were chosen independently and then reconciled by eye. Here they share a generator, which is why a rounded corner and a padding step are never nearly harmonious — they are the same arithmetic.

The practice. The defining constraint of a kolam is that the line is continuous. It weaves through the whole grid and returns to where it began. A break is not a variation; it is a failure of the form.

The rule. Interfaces preserve a traversable path. Every state a user can reach has a route back that does not require undoing work or reloading. Transitions move things along that path rather than replacing one screen with another.

Why it holds. This is the principle that does the most product work. It converts a stylistic idea into a set of interaction requirements that a team can actually argue about in a design review.

The practice. Kolams are typically four-fold symmetric — invariant under quarter-turn rotation and both mirrors. That regularity is what makes an intentional deviation legible at a glance, from across a courtyard.

The rule. Layouts default to lattice balance: even gutters, mirrored margins, aligned optical centres. Breaking symmetry is a deliberate act reserved for priority — one primary action per view, one emphasised card per grid, one highlighted row per table.

Why it holds. Emphasis is a currency and most interfaces are inflationary. Making symmetry the default and asymmetry the exception puts a hard budget on emphasis: spend it more than once per view and it stops meaning anything.

The practice. A kolam lasts a day. It is walked over, rained on, and swept up, and the next morning a different one is drawn in the same place. The value is in the drawing, not in the artefact.

The rule. Components are versioned to be replaced. Deprecation is a normal, scheduled event with a migration path — not an admission of failure and not a reason to keep a parallel legacy directory alive indefinitely.

Why it holds. The most common way a design system dies is accretion: nothing is ever removed, so every component has three variants, and eventually nobody can tell which one is current. A system that plans its own sweeping stays legible.