Figma adds Specs editor to keep AI agents inside brand rules

Figma announced a new Markdown-based editor called Figma Specs, designed to let teams define their design language and give both Figma’s own AI agents and third-party agents a clear set of brand rules to follow while creating. The feature debuted at the company’s first Config event in India, alongside a public beta of its code layers tool and new integrations with the Payload headless content-management system Figma acquired last year.

Figma Specs is a markdown editor where users can write out a design language in plain language, referencing other Figma elements such as canvas objects, embedded FigJam diagrams, code layers, and designs; the resulting document can stand alone or live inside the canvas, and teams can bring in design libraries, code libraries, and guidelines alongside it so that agents have a centralized system of rules to consult. The push for more structure follows Figma making its agent on canvas available to a wider user base in the past week; because AI output is inherently non-deterministic, the company said it is building tools meant to steer agents toward more predictable results.

Code layers, which adds coding directly to canvas designs for more interactive prototypes, moved from private beta — announced back in June — into public beta at the India event, letting more users turn a design into code or edit part of that code to iterate on a prototype. Figma’s chief design officer, Loredana Crisan, framed the push around a shift in what AI has made possible: “There are 17-times more lines of code being produced today than in the past. But when you’re looking at releases, only 1.3-times more releases. A lot of that code actually is not necessarily built to ship, but really built to discover what the product is. It’s built to design.”

Figma also said it now supports more than 20 tools through its MCP integration, including Open Code, Dia, Grok Bot, and the Indian AI startup Sarvam, and that it is integrating Payload with its Figma Make product for generating dynamic websites and managing content directly — Payload’s downloads have risen sixfold over the past 12 months, according to the company. Figma opened its first India office late last year, covering sales, partnerships, go-to-market, and product support; the company says India is its biggest market by users outside the United States, with its platform used by 40% of the top 100 companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Why it matters

Figma’s move to formalize design rules for agents — rather than just ship more AI features — signals that the harder problem in AI-assisted design tools isn’t generating output, it’s making that output consistent and controllable at scale. With India already Figma’s largest market outside the US, these same AI-governance tools are likely to shape how the company expands dev-tool adoption in fast-growing markets.