How Figma MCP Server transforms the design process
As AI transforms design, UX professionals must move beyond visuals and embrace structure, strategy, and systems thinking. This article introduces Figma’s MCP Server, what it is, why it matters, and the new design skills UX professionals need in the AI era.
Olesea Moraru
9/13/20252 min read
Where once designers were primarily focused on wireframes and static mockups, today they’re expected to prototype, code, and validate concepts with unprecedented speed. Below some several key skills that are becoming increasingly important for a UX designer:
1. Intentional design structuring and organisation: Designers need to build their Figma files with a clean, well-named structure, organised layouts, and effective component usage.
2. Proficiency in Design Systems.
3. Embedding Design Intent and "Wisdom".
4. A significant skill is the ability to add explicit guidelines, prompts, and non-visual information directly into design files using annotations.
Figma’s MCP Server
An MCP, which stands for Model Context Protocol, is essentially a server that Figma built to simplify how AI agents get information from design tools like Figma. In essence, the MCP solves the problem of integrating comprehensive design context into AI development workflows, aiming to generate better, more accurate, and more reusable code.
Why it was built?
When you use AI agents to generate code, they usually understand your existing codebase. However, sometimes they need more information or "context" from your designs in Figma to create code that perfectly matches your design intent and existing code practices.
The MCP server was built by Figma to address several key problems in the design-to-code workflow:A
Manual Design Inspection: in an era of AI, manually clicking around a design file to inspect every detail for implementation felt manual and inefficient. The MCP allows AI agents to retrieve this information, reducing the need for designers or developers to manually inspect and extract details.
Poor Quality and Misaligned AI-Generated Code: while AI agents can generate code with an awareness of the existing codebase, they often lack the crucial design context needed to produce high-quality, reusable code that precisely matches design intent. Without this context, AI-generated code often required significant refactoring because it wasn't aligned with the codebase or the specific design.
How it works?
The Figma Dev Mode MCP server sits within the Figma application itself. When you're using Dev Mode in Figma, it gathers all the relevant design details, things like layout, spacing, variables, assets, and information about connected code components. It then delivers this rich context directly to your AI agent.
Its goal?
The main goal of an MCP server is to help AI agents generate better, more accurate code from designs. It ensures that the generated code aligns with your design's structure and intent, reducing the need for manual refactoring and making the code more reusable.
Designers are increasingly encouraged to build their Figma files with a good, clean structure, well-named layers, and effective component usage. This is crucial because "better structure means better results" when AI agents generate code.