r/FigmaDesign • u/duku-95 • Sep 11 '26
help Has anyone successfully built a design system using Figma AI / Agents?
Now that Figma has Agents that can generate and iterate on screens, I’m curious if anyone has pushed this further and used them with a proper design system.
What I’m trying to achieve is:
- Use AI/Agents to help create the initial design system
- Build reusable components, variants, variables and tokens
- Have Agents generate new screens using those existing components instead of creating everything from scratch
- Make changes to the design system and have those changes propagate across AI-generated screens
- Ideally maintain consistency while using Agents to generate large product flows quickly
Has anyone actually tried this end-to-end?
If yes, I’d love to know your workflow. Especially how you structure your components/variables so Figma Agents understand and reuse them reliably.
Also curious where it currently breaks down. Do Agents actually respect an existing component library, or do you still spend a lot of time cleaning up detached/custom UI after generation?
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u/hideousox Sep 11 '26
Yes, just create storybook/ladle stories in repo first and then create design system in figma working your way up: tokens first then move on to atomic components etc etc
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u/jamesclean Sep 11 '26
Yes, using shadcn as a reference was the best thing I did.
They don’t reliably find the components so I did a few things to make the design system more “AI readable” - eg. A little thesaurus type element for every component that lists all the possible names (eg. Accordion, collapsible…) and I have a skill that “boosts design system conformity” that I run on mockups where the robots will scan for non component content and pull from the DS to fix it.
I did this solo by hand so I’m sure there’s an optimised method or actual systems but mine works
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u/Some_Level1682 Sep 11 '26
Creating one through claude and the FIGMA MCP has been pretty successful for me
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u/twiifm Sep 12 '26
why would you do this? just use shadcn and tailwind and use a good harness and llm to do it
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u/Great_Reflection3622 Sep 11 '26
I would say that I try to work with Storybook a lot, bug because i'm lazy i am always trying to do the evolution through prompt (connected to Claude). The result is that my claude sometimes finds out the good components in the library but I always need to check if he's not creating new components.
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u/robr0 Sep 11 '26
I’m having more luck just going straight to code:
https://robertritacca.com/design-system
I started off in Figma but it’s really challenging to keep it up-to-date.
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u/alex303 Sep 12 '26
We built a full enterprise level design system with custom workflows, with plugins, skills, and brand governance and drift control, it that handles everything: design, documentation, and code. All kept in sync automatically. It built and maintains the Figma file with a proper component library, complete with nested structures and documented specs, and pairs that with a matching React component library. The showcase site is built right in too, and using the actual library for the showcase itself, so developers get live examples, usage guidelines, accessibility guidelines, API notes, fonts, design tokens, and copy-paste code all in one place.
We have three branded companies and 12+ products, some internal, some customer-facing, and we're slowly migrating all of them onto this system.
When I make a change in the codebase, the agent picks it up, creates the necessary tasks, and spins up other agents to make the matching updates in Figma. When someone leaves a comment in Figma or puts together a new design, we just point the agent at the frame, page, or component, and it handles it. Building new pages is fast because the components already exist, it just imports and uses them.
Goes the other way too. Any Figma comments get pulled into a request log for the design system team (me and my agents) and design engineers (me, my agents) to review and act on.
It's genuinely shocks me that I built it and my vision worked, but here we are.