Unified version numbers
Starting with this release of the CMS Design System, we will renumber our releases to unify all packages to a single version number. This release was slated to be version 14 of Core & CMS, version 16 of Medicare and version 18 of Healthcare. We have decided to align with the highest version number, which in this case is version 18.
React 19 upgrade
As part of our ongoing efforts to keep our dependencies up to date, we have upgraded our React version and its underlying dependencies to 19.2.4. This should be a straightforward upgrade for many teams.
The most significant change is the removal of React components from our CDN bundle. (#4036) With version 19, React removed the UMD builds that enabled our React components to be used within a browser. We are unaware of any teams currently using our components in this way. If you are affected, you will need to download our NPM packages in order to continue using our React components.
Tooltip now uses Floating UI
Our Tooltip component relied on a dependency called PopperJS that is now deprecated. We have replaced it with its modern replacement, Floating UI.
The Tooltip component should look and function the same as it always has. The only change to the API is the removal of the "auto", "auto-start", and "auto-end" options from the placement prop. This behavior now comes by default.
As part of this work, we were able to remove two other dependencies that handled features now covered by Floating UI, focus-trap-react and react-transition-group.
Figma Code Connect snippets are here
Figma Code Connect helps speed up design to development handoffs. Developers can use the Figma MCP server to implement designs as code. Code Connect provides the Figma MCP server with concrete code examples and prop mapping to increase the fidelity of generated code.
LLMs.txt files are now embedded in our NPM packages
NPM packages now include a docs directory containing AI-friendly text files organized according to the information architecture of design.cms.gov and authored in pure Markdown. These files are designed to be easier for coding agents and IDE assistants to read and reference during development.
For example, a developer implementing a Badge component can point an agent to the local documentation at node_modules/@cmsgov/{design-system-package}/dist/docs/components/badge/llms.txt to provide usage & accessibility guidance as context.
Updates to design.cms.gov
While most of these updates went live before this release, it's worth highlighting some of the changes we've made to design.cms.gov recently:
- The Documentation Page layout is now the Article layout
- There is a new Form review pattern.
- For teams that need a self-contained 404 page, we now offer a "lite" version of our 404 Page Guidance pattern.
- We also added instructions on how to integrate Figma Code Connect with Microsoft Copilot.
And more!
We removed deprecated props, fixed an issue where the Google Translate Chrome extension caused any page using the InlineError component to crash, and added over twenty new icons to the Medicare.gov child theme! See the full release notes for a complete list of all changes in this version.