The screen is ready—but can you hand it straight to a developer?
For example, you might ask Figma Agent for a payment screen and get a mockup quickly, but when you inspect a button, it could be a new shape rather than your team’s component. Even if it looks like the same blue, it may be connected to the wrong semantic variable. For teams that run a design system, this cleanup can be more worrying than generation speed.
A useful change with Figma Agent is that, instead of handing over an image as the result, it creates editable layers in the design file where people work. You can make requests based on selected layers, edit other parts directly while the agent works, or explore multiple directions in parallel in separate frames.
Still, working on the same canvas does not mean it automatically understands your team’s rules. This is why you need to organize the published libraries and component structure the agent will reference before writing a long prompt.
First, test library compliance on a single screen
Your first attempt does not need to cover an entire new product. One screen with clear states, such as login or payment, is enough. Duplicate the original and use the process below to check both the editable result and structural accuracy.
- Create a test frame.
In a Figma Design file, duplicate an existing screen and select the layers in that frame. You need a Full seat and edit access to modify the file. - Open the agent from the selection.
Click Agents or press Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to start a prompt for the selected area. To continue a conversation, open Agents from the left navigation area of the design file. - Connect the published library as context.
In the prompt box, add your team library through Add context. For required components, variables, and styles, type @ and select the actual item from the list. If the library was recently updated, republish it first so the agent can reference the latest version. - Request both the allowed scope and required states.
As shown below, restrict the agent to the connected library and ask it to create three directions in separate frames. Do not send the bracketed portions as-is; type @ and select your team’s actual components and semantic variables from the list.
Using only the Product UI library connected through Add context, transform the selected payment screen into three information architectures. Create each direction in a separate frame so they can be compared. Use only [the payment summary component selected with @], [the button component selected with @], and [the background and text semantic variables selected with @]; do not create new colors or detached components. Show default, loading, and error states in every direction.
- Judge success by the connection structure, not a pretty screen.
Check whether all three variations were created as editable layers in separate frames, whether they use team components and semantic variables, and whether they are free of hardcoded values and missing required states. On Organization or Enterprise plans, Check designs can additionally find incorrect colors, elements from other libraries, and hardcoded values that should be variables. - Revert only what is wrong.
You can cancel unwanted changes with Undo in chat or Cmd/Ctrl+Z. To compare before and after, duplicate the AI-edited version first, then revert the original.
Check access issues based on what you can see
If Agents itself is not visible, first check whether an administrator has disabled AI features. The official help materials do not fully align on eligible plans and seat coverage for drafts, so it is safer to also check your current account UI and administrator settings.
If you can chat but cannot edit the file, check that you have a Full seat and edit access to that file. Users with View, Dev, or Collab seats, as well as view-only users, can chat but have limited file editing. When you reach the monthly usage limit, a limit notice appears in the product, and the limit resets each month.
Give the agent higher-level blocks it can assemble
A good design system is now both a gallery for people and a work interface for agents. Rather than listing only atomic components, Figma recommends providing higher-level blocks such as cards and headers that already contain spacing, color, and layout rules. That reduces the burden on the agent to guess how small elements should be combined each time.
The items to prepare are concrete. Use meaningful layer and component names, auto layout, explicit component properties and variants, purpose-revealing variables, and plain-language descriptions. In those descriptions, it helps to state “when to use it,” “how it differs from similar components,” and “which states are required.”
Start organizing with blocks that appear often on screens
Rather than starting by refining every button name, choose one repeated block from real screens, such as a payment summary card, search result row, or settings section. Organize and publish that block’s auto layout, properties, states, and semantic variables, then compare how much the agent’s results change. This makes the effect of the preparation work easier to see.
You can also use the agent to organize the system itself. Official workflows introduce drafting documentation, bulk changes to components, styles, and variables, extracting component candidates from repeated patterns, and an initial review of missing states and inconsistencies. But these results are also drafts that require human review before publishing.
A similar-looking screen does not mean the system was preserved
In a test by an independent design studio, results improved after connecting a library and explicitly instructing the agent to use it. However, the test found cases where buttons were connected to different semantic variables or a text color variable was used for a divider. Some results also had lower contrast on light backgrounds.
This test used one company’s design system, and it did not disclose the full prompt, number of iterations, or quantitative error rate. So it cannot be generalized to say the same errors occur across every account and the latest version. Still, it is a useful practical warning that a visually similar result and a handoff-ready structure must be checked separately.
Check four things before handing it to a developer.
- Have instances of team components been preserved?
- Are the correct semantic variables connected to color, spacing, and typography?
- Are required states such as default, loading, error, and disabled included?
- Are hardcoded values or elements from another library mixed in?
If there is a problem, select only the relevant layer and variable and request a fix instead of rebuilding the entire screen.
Design Agent and Make produce different outputs
If your goal is to create screen structures and visual variations, Design Agent is the starting point. Because it generates and edits real layers in Figma Design, people can continue refining them on the canvas. Figma Make, by contrast, focuses on creating interactive apps and prototypes and publishing them to the web. It also supports a round-trip workflow: send screens organized in Design to Make to define behavior, or copy frames from Make back into Design.
If you want to bring content made in an external coding agent into a Figma file, write to canvas, available through the remote Figma MCP server’s use_figma tool, is a separate route. Writing to an existing file requires a Full seat and edit access to that file, and the imported result must be checked directly on the canvas.
You do not need to use all three features. Use Design Agent for exploring editable screens, Make for testing interactions, and MCP for connecting external code work with the canvas, and the choice becomes easier.
If you want to go deeper
The Figma design agent is here — Learn about editing that starts from selected layers, parallel prompts, and workflows between Design and Make. figma.com
Work with the Figma agent in design files — A starting guide to where to open Agents, connect libraries, use @ references, Undo, and check current availability requirements. help.figma.com
AI workflows collection: Best practices to help Figma AI understand your design system — Explains library preparation criteria in more detail, including higher-level blocks, naming, auto layout, variants, and variables. help.figma.com
We Tested Figma Agent On a Real Design System. Here's What Actually Happened. — An independent test that examines semantic variable and contrast issues found after connecting a real system. entifydesign.com
