Luis explores a few approaches for handling components used in multiple design files but not yet ready for the main library. Delaying the creation of components until later doesn’t scale. Using naming conventions and canvas organization to separate local components doesn’t help with bringing them to another file. The best solution is to create Staging Libraries, ​“where your specific team, feature, squad, whatever can create what is in effect an extension of the system for your specific piece of work.” When the component needs to be used across multiple files, it can be pushed from the local level to the Staging library, and once it’s ready to become a part of the design system, it can be moved to the Global library.

A smart technique for debugging design system usage that will nicely complement the new Check designs linter: ​“I wanted to see which parts of my designs were using tokens and components from my design system, just by looking at the canvas. The solution: an additional variable mode paired with an outline component. Toggle it on, and everything using the system lights up: tokens in bright cyan, components with dashed outlines. Everything else stays unchanged.”

It’s wild how long it takes to build some of these larger features. Jacob Miller, a Product Manager for the Design Systems and AI team at Figma, shares an early exploration for slots from 3 years ago! I’ve been begging Jacob for slots at this year’s Config and got a feeling that they’re already working on it, but still it will be launched only next year.

If you wonder why it’s taking so long, Jacob wrote an insightful reply on how his team approaches these changes: ​“With design systems features, we have to plan them years in advance. Things like components, variables, and styles are used on the order of billions — one wrong move will result in breaking files and ruining critical design work. We have to be methodical. […] With DS features, I’m usually planning them around 3 years in advance.”

If you’re curious how slots and other new features will work, check out Jacob’s AMA.

Watch the Schema keynote to see demos and learn more about all the features Figma just launched.

A summary of everything Figma announced at Schema to help teams design for the AI era. Extended collections are a new way to manage multi-brand design systems, where authors can release a simple whitelabeled version of their design system that designers across the company can extend with their own themes, publish, and reuse. Slots let you add your own layers within instances and easily specify which instances a slot accepts, allowing for both increased usability and compliance with your design system. Check designs linter matches your raw values with their corresponding variables. Finally, the team completed a massive rewrite of the architecture for massive performance gains.

In addition to new design features, Figma has been working hard to bring context from your codebase into your design system. With the new Code Connect UI, users can connect Figma directly to their GitHub repositories and use the new AI suggestions feature to quickly find the right code file to map to Figma components — no coding necessary. The MCP server is out of beta and generally available — now you can add guidelines for how AI models should adhere to your design system. Make kits let you generate React code components and CSS files for your styles and variables, then package those outputs for use in Figma Make. Additionally, Figma announced NPM package imports, native importing and exporting of variables, simplifying authoring experience for collection, and increased variable modes.

Ridd led a panel about how AI is shifting design workflows, where Nick Pattison from Primary, Pranathi Peri from v0 (Vercel), and Henry Modisett from Perplexity were sharing how they use AI for prototyping and exploring ideas. One pattern that stood out to me between this panel and the above Superhuman rebrand case study is how designers now create specialized one-off tools for generating patterns, brand assets, or special effects. Personal software will only get more and more common.

Dylan Field on the newest addition to Figma’s product line: ​“Figma has acquired Weavy, a platform that brings generative AI and professional editing tools into the open canvas. As Figma Weave, the company will help build out image, video, animation, motion design, and VFX media generation and editing capability on the Figma platform.”

In A Match Made in Heaven, Weavy’s early investor, Ben Blumenrose from Designer Fund, shared three key features of their product approach that make for a very powerful tool — being model agnostic, exposing process, and working as an aggregator.

Dave Martin, Security Engineer at Figma, shares his experience building Response Sampling, a system designed to detect potential sensitive data leaks in real time. ​“By providing ongoing visibility into the data leaving our services, Response Sampling gives our teams the opportunity to investigate and address issues quickly, reducing the risk of exposure and improving our confidence in how data is handled.”

Developer Advocate Akbar Mirza joins VS Code Live to discuss how the remote Figma MCP server and new Code Connect updates bring design and codebase context into VS Code, so you can generate production-ready code that is aligned with your design system.

Sara Clayton from Dropbox shares some of her recent lessons and observations about experimenting with AI: ​“the design-to-engineering bridge is improving but not yet seamless, weak systems and shortcuts will be surfaced rather than hidden, true progress depends on internal champions who can push the boundaries, and – above all – critical thinking remains the foundation of good design.”

A reminder that Figma’s free virtual conference for the design systems community is happening this week on Tuesday, October 28, from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm PDT. Besides the keynote, I’m especially interested in talks ​“Spectacular slots” by Nathan Curtis and ​“Crafting design context for agentic coding workflows” by Jake Albaugh.

Figma shows off incredible projects made with their apps on three giant screens in Times Square.

Molly shares examples of when to reach for ​“inverse” color tokens and why to avoid just going with ​“white”.

Damien Correll, VP Design, Brand & Creative at Figma, gives a behind-the-scenes look into how the brand studio team uses the recent Gemini 2.5 Nano Banana update to create realistic mocks.

Erik D. Kennedy attempts to answer two questions: Will AI take design jobs? If so, which ones? And in light of that, what should designers focus on? Love this advice: ​“I’d recommend steering your own designs away from the hallmarks of UI-by-AI: Inter, cards displayed in parallel, everything being 8px rounded, etc. The time to know your brand, know your audience, know the problem you’re solving, and lean way in starts now.”

Dylan Field comes to Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast to talk about keeping internal morale up after the Adobe acquisition fell through, his approach to maintaining pace and a sense of urgency 13 years in, how to systematically develop taste, how Figma decides which product lines to add, why he obsesses over ​“time to value”, and how AI is making design more valuable. Don’t miss Lenny’s biggest takeaways from this conversation.

Schema — Figma’s conference for the design systems community — is back for the virtual livestream on Tuesday, October 28. Topics include the future of design systems, best practices for design and development with AI, and product updates to design systems in Figma.

The official Figma MCP server now supports Gemini CLI, OpenAI Codex, and Atlassian is coming soon.

Mike Smith from Smith & Diction shares a working file with a refined visual identity for Contra. Love peeking behind the curtain.

Tommy Geoco shows his workflow for building Lorelight with Figma and Claude Code.