Fantastic update to shadcn/​ui — now you can pick your component library (Radix UI or Base UI), visual style, theme, icon set, base color, fonts, and build something that doesn’t look like everything else. Shadcn/​ui was always highly customizable thanks to well-thought-out design primitives and treating components as a boilerplate, but this release takes it to the next level.

Nice improvement to the Cursor Browser, providing a quick way to tweak design. It’s not a replacement for Figma, but a more hands-on way to make changes without prompting or switching to code. Who would think this feature could initiate a big design debate?

“We’re excited to release a visual editor for the Cursor Browser. It brings together your web app, codebase, and powerful visual editing tools, all in the same window. You can drag elements around, inspect components and props directly, and describe changes while pointing and clicking. Now, interfaces in your product are more immediate and intuitive, closing the gap between design and code.”

Figma introduces a way to track your AI credit usage, and on March 11, 2026, will offer more ways to buy additional AI credits.

“Use ChatGPT to generate presentations, social posts, invitations, digital ads, posters, and more. The Figma app is available to ChatGPT users on all plans. Support is coming soon for users in the EU.”

“Join us to hear how Figma and OpenAI’s Codex are making design-to-code workflows more efficient and accurate. With the Figma MCP server, developers can easily bring design context into Codex to generate production-ready code. We’ll chat with Romain Huet, Head of Developer Experience at OpenAI, for a live demo, practical tips, and a Q&A session.”

Three new AI image editing tools for precise editing and manipulation work — Erase object, Isolate object, and Expand image — and a new toolbar that pairs existing image editing capabilities with these new features. ​“Now, you can lasso any object in an image and use Erase object to remove it completely, or Isolate object to edit or reposition it—without affecting the image background. You can also take a single object or person and apply lighting, color, or focus adjustments. […] Expand image extends the image background to fit new aspect ratios without distortion, preserving the integrity of an image while adapting it to any layout.”

Ana Boyer designs a web homepage, showcasing recently launched Figma Design and Draw features. ​“Learn how to create a text-inlay parallax hero using Remove background and Isolate object, apply Glass effects, expand an image within a grid, generate illustrations via AI prompts, and add Draw texture effects.”

Luis made an incredibly useful widget to help check off requirements before the component gets to production — states, accessibility, documentation, tokens, etc. Checklists are an underrated tool for optimizing routine tasks, and I’m looking forward to trying this one. (Design Systems Checklist is another great resource worth checking out.)

Cameron Moll​’s team made a new plugin to prep your designs for code readiness and developer handoff through a combination of smart autofixes enabled by AI and guided manual corrections. I bet it will pair well with Luis’ widget above to cover different phases of the ​“make it work, make it right, make it beautiful” process.

Ridd highlights a few examples from his workflow of delivering production-ready code to his product. Love this part: ​“I explored this concept in Make and really liked where it landed. A couple years ago, I would’ve dropped a Cleanshot .gif on the canvas and asked my developer to recreate it as closely as possible. But I’m no longer making concept cars. This component is the design. Every detail is rooted in code and behaves exactly how I want it to in production.”

Starting today, websites published from Figma Make and Figma Sites include more metadata for better search and sharing experiences. The improvements include auto-generated site descriptions for Figma Make and support for OpenGraph and X tags for published Figma Make and Sites so they look better on social.

Designer Advocate Anthony DiSpezio is joined by Christine Vallaure for a walkthrough of best practices for designing responsive websites in Figma Sites. They cover how to design across breakpoints, tips for layout and structure, and other best practices.

“In this interview, Jay chats with Dan, Director of Brand Design & Video at Rippling. You will learn how Dan uses Figma Buzz to speed up Rippling’s brand design workflow.”

“Admins on Organization and Enterprise plans can now disable ​‘From Figma’ Community templates in Buzz, ensuring teams use only the templates your brand team has published and approved.”

“Templates built with Variable modes now work seamlessly when published to Buzz. This gives your marketing teams more flexibility to toggle between your brand modes like colors, campaigns, markets, and more — all while staying on brand. When they open a template published with variables, they’ll see a new Variable switcher in the menu to easily change modes.”

Tommy Geoco perfectly summarized the debate between Karri Saarinen from Linear and Ryo Lu from Cursor.

Karri Saarinen reacts to the announcement of a visual editor in Cursor: ​“Whenever a designer becomes more of a builder, some idealism and creativity dies. Not because building is bad, but because you start out including constraints earlier in the process than they should. […] People forget that the creative process is not about tools. It’s about forming a vision, and then translating that vision into some form.”

Ryo Lu replies: ​“Great tools should unify, not fragment. They should connect the designer’s canvas with the builder’s editor, connect the writer’s outline with the team’s roadmap, and let patterns repeat and evolve across everything instead of trapping them in separate silos. Designers can build. Builders can design. The old line between ​“design tools” and ​“dev tools” is an artifact of the software we had, not the people we are.”

Kaari clarifies his thoughts in an article: ​“I tend to think about design as a search, not a production pipeline. You start with a messy problem. Early on, you do not know the answer. This is why I never fully buy the idea that design is about output. I agree that design is useless without shipping, but the process of designing is not. The design process, and the suffering part of that process, are valuable. […] Use whatever tools you want, but be deliberate about what mode you are in. Protect exploration from premature constraint. Invite constraints when you are ready to learn from them. Use code as feedback, not as a cage.”

On constraints: ​“If you let constraints define the space too early, you do not just get a worse outcome. You lose outcomes that never get discovered.”

On unification: ​“The dream of a coherent universe is compelling. A world where ideas move from chaos to clarity without translation loss. Where designers can build and builders can design. I see the desire, and it can be good. But unification has a shadow side. It can turn into standardization. If everything is built from the same primitives, you get the same patterns repeated across teams. Tools raise the floor, but they can also lower the ceiling if they quietly define what is worth attempting. If the easiest path is always the most conventional path, convention becomes the product.”

Ryo replies: ​“Code isn’t a cage, it’s the only material that’s actually boundless. You can rebuild, restructure, and reimagine faster than any other medium in human history. The idea that working in code locks you into existing patterns is only true if you’re afraid of the material. […] Sketches and explorations feel free because they let you avoid the hard questions. Building forces you to answer them, and that’s where you discover what actually works.”

Kaari replies: ​“The ​“make your own things” from generic blocks idea is warm one, and I do appreciate it. Where it starts to lose me is when it tries to force a reality that doesn’t really exist, and it’s not what people do or look for. Look at any craft. The kitchen. The workshop. Purpose-built spaces filled with purpose-built tools, often shaped by centuries of tradition (also sometimes known as experience). Serious craftspeople don’t operate in primitives. A chef doesn’t stock ​“a knife”, ​“a pot”, ​“a carrot”. They have a specific knife, a specific size, a tradition they trust.”

MDS pitches in: ​“There is something fundamentally different about freeform exploration versus direct end product manipulation. The same way there’s a big difference between drawing with a pencil on paper, moving objects around on a screen, or writing words in a journal versus typing words on a screen. And now we can have AI do some or all of that for us.”

“So I say let cookie cutter primitives happen. Every font uses the exact same alphabet. Every song uses the same 12 notes. Some people will always want to build something unique regardless of those primitives. […] The idea that everything may become cookie cutter is not an actual problem. It’s a theoretical problem. Meanwhile, there are real problems with real impact waiting to be solved.”

Kaari wraps it up: ​”I believe design comes in many flavors. It’s influenced by the person, the domain, the market, the customers. In consumer products, you might need to test ideas quickly because motivations are hard to predict. In B2B or enterprise, you often have more context and can design from that. Some industries require extreme reliability and clarity. The environment matters too. Stakeholders, clients, company culture, and your skills as a designer. If you’re more visual, you lead with visuals. If you’re strong in code, you might use it earlier. […] I want to elevate this discussion above tools, and make sure tools don’t take over the future of design. I don’t want us to needlessly devalue conceptual and divergent thinking just because new tools make execution easier.”

“Our industry is not very patient, and once you start building designs directly to production as the default, the culture and organizational reasons to consider problems, concepts, and intentions start evaporating. We start devaluing the why behind our designs in favor of output.
My worry isn’t the code or the tools themselves. It’s a decline in consideration, and with that, a decline in unique, well-designed products. The question is how we keep that alive even as new tools and technologies emerge.”

Ed Elson from First Time Founders discusses with Dylan Field the future of design in the age of AI, how his management style has changed over time, and what it was like to go public.