Figma unveils Specs markdown rulebook to steer AI agents

At its first Config event in India, Figma introduced Specs, a markdown-based editor meant to encode a company's design language as a document that both human designers and AI agents reference while working on canvas. TechCrunch reported that Specs can stand on its own or sit inside the canvas, and can embed FigJam diagrams, code layers, and design elements as part of the rulebook.

Alongside Specs, Figma moved Code Layers, which adds coding capability to canvas designs for interactive prototypes, from private beta into public beta. Users can ask an agent to convert a design into code, or edit a code block to iterate on a prototype. Agent on Canvas was expanded to a wider user base, with the company adding steering tools to manage AI's non-deterministic behavior toward more predictable outcomes.

The framing came from Loredana Crisan, Figma's chief design officer. "AI has made available the ability to build. 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," she said. Speaking to TechCrunch, Crisan added, "We see Figma as the place where software teams come to decide what they build and ship."

The India event also saw Figma extend MCP support to over 20 new tools, including Open Code, Dia, Grok Bot, and Indian startup Sarvam, and announce an integration between its acquired Payload headless CMS and Figma Make for generating dynamic websites. Payload's downloads have risen sixfold in the past 12 months, per the company. India is Figma's largest market outside the United States, where it works with 40% of the top 100 BSE-listed firms. The push lands amid a run of enterprise-AI launches we've been tracking this week, including Bloomberg opening ASKB AI to all terminal users.