Figma Launches Specs, a Design-Rule System for AI Agents

What happened

Per TechCrunch on October 15, Figma announced Figma Specs at its first Config event in India: a Markdown editor for defining a company's design language, bringing in design and code libraries and integrating the headless CMS Payload. Teams can reference canvas elements in Specs documents and embed FigJam diagrams, code layers, and designs; the documents can stand alone or live alongside the canvas.

Figma said teams can also bring design libraries, code libraries, and guidelines into the centralized system, which agents can consult when creating. Over the past week, Figma's agent-on-canvas became available to a wider user base; the company said that given AI's non-deterministic nature, tools are needed to steer output toward more predictable results.

Key facts

1. Code Layers goes public beta: Code Layers, introduced in private beta in June for coding on canvas and building interactive prototypes, moved to public beta; users can ask the agent to turn a design into code or change parts of the code to iterate.
2. MCP expands to 20+ tools: Figma's MCP support now covers over 20 tools, including Open Code, Dia, Grok Bot, and Indian AI startup Sarvam.
3. 17x code, 1.3x releases: Chief Design Officer Loredana Crisan told TechCrunch that teams now produce 17 times more lines of code than in the past, but only 1.3 times more releases; much of that code is built to discover what the product is, not to ship.
4. Payload downloads up 6x: Payload, the headless CMS Figma acquired last year, saw downloads grow sixfold over the past 12 months and is now integrated with Figma Make for generating dynamic websites and managing content directly.
5. India is its largest market outside the US: Figma opened its first India office late last year; the country is its biggest user market outside the United States, and the platform works with 40% of the top 100 companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange.