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Codegen Plugins (And Other Tips) for Automating Design to Code | Figma Blog (opens in new tab)

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Codegen in Figma’s Dev Mode is intended as a starting point for design implementation, not a complete replacement for developer judgment. Figma provides built-in snippets, while custom plugins extend code generation for different frameworks, languages, and team conventions. The post highlights several tools that can accelerate design-to-code workflows across web and mobile projects.

Codegen as a Design-to-Development Starting Point

  • Codegen automatically generates code from defined design rules or specifications.
  • Figma argues that generated code should augment—not automate away—the design and development process.
  • Dev Mode creates code snippets for selected canvas objects in the inspect panel.
  • Users can choose different programming languages and measurement units.
  • Teams with mature design systems can build custom codegen plugins to match their conventions.

Anima: Customizable React and HTML Generation

  • Exports Figma components into React or HTML with CSS, SCSS, or Tailwind.
  • Produces interactive, responsive, and maintainable snippets.
  • Detects repeated components to reduce duplication.
  • Learns team conventions from added code snippets.
  • Supports prompts for animations and style-specific adjustments directly in Dev Mode.

Builder: AI and Code Components

  • Generates React, Svelte, and HTML using AI.
  • Can incorporate a team’s existing code components to better align design and implementation.
  • Allows users to refine output conversationally and train it to match their coding style.
  • Automatically adapts designs for responsiveness.
  • Provides a separate web interface for experimenting with generated code outside Figma.

Figma to Code: Open-Source Multi-Platform Output

  • Converts designs into responsive web or mobile code.
  • Supports HTML, Tailwind, Flutter, and SwiftUI.
  • Lets users preview Tailwind output and copy it into their code editor.
  • Is available as a free, open-source Figma Community plugin.

Locofy.ai: Interactive Web and Mobile Code

  • Generates code for components and full screens in React, HTML/CSS, Next.js, Gatsby, and Vue.
  • Supports design optimizations such as auto layout and frame grouping.
  • Adds interactivity through semantic HTML tags, libraries, and actions.
  • Produces responsive layouts, reusable components, props, and human-readable class names.
  • Enables teams to share prototypes, bind data, and export code or Storybook files.
  • Supports direct GitHub synchronization with automatic merging and conflict resolution.

The practical recommendation is to use codegen to reach a useful first draft faster, then have designers and developers refine the output against the project’s design system, architecture, and coding standards.