Figma's Dylan Field: MCP 'is not a perfect protocol'

Figma is deepening its commitment to MCP, the open-source standard that links AI agents to outside data sources and tools, even though co-founder Dylan Field has publicly aired doubts about it. At the design company’s first Config conference, held in India, Figma announced 20 new MCP partners, including Notion, Linear, Mistral, ClickUp and Dia, among others.

Field’s skepticism isn’t new. Days before the announcement, one of MCP’s co-creators criticized Figma for not supporting the open-source tool Pi. Responding on X, Field pointed out that Anthropic, which created the MCP standard, doesn’t expose its own artifacts or other cloud resources through MCP, arguing that the open-versus-closed framing ignores the problem of asymmetric context-sharing. He later said Figma does plan to support Pi.

Asked about the tension at a media briefing, Field said Figma wants to open up its ecosystem but doesn’t see MCP as settled. “I’m really excited about what we’re doing in terms of opening up our ecosystem. I also think that MCP is not a perfect protocol. And I think that it is something that has tons of room for improvement,” he said, adding that the standard favors frontier AI labs. He said he understands why people online want a protocol they can use freely with their Figma data, and that he wants that too.

Field explained the reluctance to go fully open: the more data Figma exposes through MCP, the greater the risk of abuse. He acknowledged that most users have no malicious intent, but said the company still has to account for that risk.

Why it matters

A platform that depends on third-party integrations for relevance can’t ignore MCP, but Field’s public hedging signals Figma wants leverage over the protocol’s evolution rather than simply accepting frontier labs’ terms.