Jesse Lumarie describes building Figma's first MCP server while the protocol and its clients were still changing. The team initially targeted developers who needed design context inside coding agents, exposing information such as component structure, spacing and variables without requiring a separate integration for every tool.
Jesse Lumarie explains why the team chose a React and Tailwind representation of Figma's scene graph, supplemented by images. Sending encoded image data directly in code consumed too much context, so the team separated image references from the representation. It also developed evaluations that considered both visual quality and correct use of variables and themes.
Jesse Lumarie argues that visual fidelity alone is insufficient when organizations already have accessible, localized components. Figma's Code Connect lets the server point an agent toward those existing components, improving reuse while reducing the amount of generated markup sent through the context window.
Jesse Lumarie recounts working around inconsistent client support for instructions, user questions and model-assisted component matching. The initial local server used the desktop application's existing authentication and permission boundaries to reach users quickly. He presents the later remote server and expanded capabilities as a continuation of that incremental approach.
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