Container queries, one year in
We rebuilt a card component around the container instead of the viewport, and the design system got smaller.
The promise was simple: components that respond to the space they are given rather than the width of the window. A year of using them in production, and the promise mostly held.
What changed
Our card used to ship four variants, each one a different arrangement for a different slot in the layout. With a container query it ships one. The card asks how wide its parent is and rearranges itself.
What did not
You still have to name the containment, and you still have to decide the breakpoints. The tooling moved; the thinking did not. That is fine. The thinking was never the slow part.
The real win is deletion. Three variants gone, three sets of documentation gone, three chances to pick the wrong one gone.
