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In the fast-evolving world of digital product development, the gap between design and development has always been a critical pain point. Designers create detailed mockups, developers interpret them into code — and somewhere along the way, things get lost in translation. To solve this, design tools like Figma have been on a mission to make the handoff process smoother, faster, and more precise.
In 2025, Figma has doubled down on that mission with its enhanced Dev Mode, promising a new era of collaboration where developers don’t just inspect designs — they get usable, potentially production-ready code. Alongside this, Figma has introduced powerful new features like the MCP server and Figma Make, both aimed at bridging the gap between visuals and code logic, and even leveraging AI to turn UI designs directly into code components.
These upgrades raise an exciting, yet critical question for teams across the globe:
Can Figma truly deliver code that’s ready for production — not just as a prototype or reference, but as code you could deploy?
As developers, designers, and product managers explore these tools, it's important to separate hype from reality. What does “production-ready” really mean in the context of Figma? What parts of the workflow are automated — and where does manual coding still play a role? Most importantly, how can teams use Figma's latest features to their fullest potential without compromising code quality?
In this blog, we’ll take a deep dive into the capabilities of Figma’s developer handoff in 2025, explore real-world use cases, and uncover whether this toolset can truly live up to its promise — or if it’s still a work in progress.
Figma has long been a favorite tool among designers for its collaborative features, real-time updates, and user-friendly interface. However, with the introduction of Dev Mode and a range of new features in 2025, Figma has taken a significant step toward empowering developers to play a bigger role in the design handoff process. But what exactly is Dev Mode, and how does it work?
Dev Mode, introduced as part of Figma’s organizational tools, offers a space specifically designed for developers. Unlike traditional Figma files, where designers primarily work on layouts, colors, and typography, Dev Mode provides a simplified and streamlined environment that allows developers to focus on the technical aspects of a design. The key elements include:
Design Inspection: Dev Mode allows developers to inspect every element of the design—down to the exact pixel dimensions, font styles, and color codes. This ensures that the final implementation closely matches the designer's intent.
Code Snippets: One of the most notable additions to Figma's Dev Mode is the ability to generate code snippets. Developers can easily copy CSS, Swift, and XML code directly from Figma to use in their projects. Although not a complete replacement for manual coding, these snippets can serve as a solid foundation for more complex tasks.
Asset Export: Developers can export all necessary assets like icons, images, and SVGs directly from Dev Mode, removing the need for constant back-and-forth with designers.
Version Control & Annotations: With an integrated version control system, Dev Mode helps track changes between design iterations. Developers can also leave annotations on designs, making it easier for teams to understand why certain design decisions were made.
These updates were designed with collaboration in mind, aiming to make the process smoother for both designers and developers, and to reduce errors that often occur when translating designs into code.
Traditionally, the handoff process between designers and developers was a cumbersome one. Designers would finalize a design, then hand off static files like PNGs or PDFs to developers, who would have to guess certain measurements or styling. This often led to miscommunication, delays, and inconsistent designs.
With Dev Mode, Figma aims to bridge that gap. By allowing developers direct access to the design elements, they can understand how each part of the design fits into the broader picture. Developers no longer have to search through design files or make assumptions about style rules—everything they need is clearly presented in the tool.
Additionally, Dev Mode integrates seamlessly with tools that developers already use, like VS Code and Storybook, making it easier to implement code that fits directly into their existing workflow. This tight integration allows developers to go from design to implementation in record time, improving overall efficiency.
Figma's Dev Mode presents an exciting promise: the ability to export code that is ready for production. But, as with many tools in the design-to-development space, the reality doesn’t always match the expectation. While Figma’s Dev Mode has significantly improved the handoff process, the question remains: can it really deliver production-ready code — or is it more of a starting point?
The biggest selling point of Dev Mode is the ability to export clean, usable code snippets. These include basic styling (CSS, Swift, XML) and component layouts that developers can incorporate directly into their projects. This can speed up the process, especially when creating simple designs with standard layouts. For many teams, this level of automation offers substantial time savings, eliminating the need to manually code every single style rule.
However, production-ready code is about much more than just styling. For a product to be production-ready, developers need code that is well-architected, efficient, scalable, and performance-optimized. While Dev Mode can help with the visual translation, it doesn’t handle critical areas like:
State management: Figma exports static layouts and styles but doesn't automatically handle interactive elements or user states (like form inputs or dynamic UI changes).
Component logic: The tool can generate simple UI elements, but it doesn't manage complex logic or behaviors (e.g., managing API calls, error handling, or complex routing).
Responsiveness: While Figma can help create layouts that are visually accurate, it won’t write the responsive code that adapts a design across multiple screen sizes, something that developers must handle manually.
Ultimately, Dev Mode does not aim to fully replace developers; it serves as an aid—providing clean, static elements for faster implementation. But for full production-level applications, the design-to-code transition is still far from automatic.
Despite the many advances Figma has made in Dev Mode, several limitations still exist. Let’s explore them further and provide examples of how developers face challenges.
One of the primary drawbacks of using Figma’s Dev Mode is the lack of control over code organization. When Figma exports code, it focuses primarily on visual styling rather than ensuring that the code is structured for long-term maintainability.
For example, while Figma’s code snippets might be visually accurate, they may lack important best practices such as:
Code modularity: Without the use of modular components, developers might find themselves working with monolithic, non-reusable code. In real-world applications, this can be inefficient and time-consuming.
Naming conventions: Dev Mode exports code based on how elements are named in Figma. If designers use inconsistent naming conventions or fail to structure the design system properly, the exported code can be messy and difficult to manage. This can add hours or even days of additional work for developers who have to refactor poorly organized code.
Scalability: As designs become more complex and teams scale their applications, the lack of well-structured, scalable code can lead to technical debt. Without manually refactoring the generated code to adhere to scalable patterns, teams risk making their projects harder to maintain over time.
While Figma can generate code for static design elements, interactive features are a different story. If a design requires interactive components, like dropdown menus, form validation, or dynamic content updates, Figma does not generate the logic required to make these components functional.
Consider a shopping cart feature in an e-commerce app. The design might look great in Figma, with a clean, intuitive layout. But to make it functional, developers need to implement complex JavaScript (or equivalent) that handles adding/removing items from the cart, updating prices in real-time, and ensuring that the user interface reflects these changes.
Figma’s Dev Mode doesn’t automatically create this logic. Instead, developers must write custom JavaScript or integrate with front-end frameworks (like React, Vue, or Angular) to manage the interactivity of the design. This means that for every dynamic component—such as a modal window, tab navigation, or animated elements—developers still need to step in and write the necessary code.
For a startup that needs a landing page or static marketing website, Figma’s Dev Mode might be sufficient. The designs are typically simple, and AI-generated code for a static page can work quite well. However, as soon as a dynamic feature or more complex interaction is introduced, the quality of the exported code drops. In these cases, while Figma can help with styling and asset exports, developers still need to handle the back-end integration or dynamic state management, which AI and Dev Mode cannot do.
To get the most out of Figma’s Dev Mode, teams must implement a few best practices to ensure the output is usable and efficient:
Design System Consistency: Designers should use consistent tokens, styles, and components across the design. This ensures that the generated code aligns with the intended look and feel.
Clean Layouts: Avoid unnecessary complexity in layouts. Keeping designs simple and modular makes the code exports cleaner and easier to work with.
Collaboration: Developers should collaborate closely with designers to ensure the exported code matches the design’s intended behavior. This is particularly important for interactive elements and responsive layouts.
Code Review: While Figma can generate code, it still requires manual review and refinement. Developers should be prepared to clean up the exported snippets, add necessary functionality, and test for performance.
By adhering to these practices, teams can use Figma’s Dev Mode as a powerful tool to accelerate their workflow, but the responsibility of ensuring production-quality code still lies with the developers.
While AI-powered design-to-code tools like Figma Make are designed to automate some of the more tedious aspects of the handoff process, it's important to understand where they truly excel and where they still fall short. AI’s ability to quickly generate static code for simple layouts and style rules is undeniably helpful, but these tools still need significant improvements to handle the more complex aspects of development.
One major benefit of AI-generated code is speed. Traditionally, developers would have to manually write out the CSS for every element of a design, which could take considerable time, especially for complex layouts. With AI, tools like Figma Make can handle this automatically, cutting down the development time by providing clean, base-level styling and layout code. This not only saves developers time, but it also ensures consistency across the design and development teams, eliminating human error when translating design specs into code.
However, when you look at more complex designs—particularly those that include dynamic elements (such as interactive buttons, animations, or even state-dependent UIs)—AI-generated code still falls short. These types of features require manual intervention, particularly when considering browser compatibility, responsive behaviors, and interactive features like form validation, input fields, or live data integration.
For example, a complex animation in a Figma design might look great in the design tool, but translating that into a production-ready implementation requires careful consideration of performance. AI tools cannot yet optimize animations for different devices, screen sizes, and performance constraints, a task still best suited for a skilled front-end developer.
Moreover, AI cannot understand context in the same way a human developer can. For example, when creating a design system that involves nested components, adaptive layouts, and conditional logic, an AI tool might generate code that works well for static pages but struggles to handle dynamic environments. This is particularly true when considering backend integrations like API calls or real-time updates, which still require significant developer input.
While AI-powered design tools can be a game-changer in some contexts, the real-world application of AI-generated code is still in its infancy. Teams at startups or companies with limited resources often use these tools to streamline the creation of prototype-level applications or MVPs (Minimum Viable Products). However, for enterprise-level applications or complex consumer products, human expertise is still necessary to ensure scalability, reliability, and usability.
For example, companies like Twitch and Airbnb have custom, highly tailored user interfaces that require specific performance optimizations. While these companies could use Figma to streamline the visual handoff process, AI-generated code would only serve as a jumping-off point. Their development teams would need to take the generated code, clean it up, and integrate it into a larger ecosystem of libraries, tools, and services that support complex interactions and high-performance requirements.
While AI tools help increase speed and efficiency, they cannot yet replace human developers when it comes to ensuring code quality in a complex, real-world environment.
As we step into 2025, Figma’s developer handoff tools have certainly evolved, bringing new features that promise faster, more seamless collaboration between designers and developers. With the introduction of Dev Mode, Figma Make, and the MCP server, Figma has brought us closer to the dream of a truly integrated design-to-development workflow. The ability to generate clean code snippets, inspect design details, and even leverage AI to assist with code generation is a game-changer for many teams.
However, while these tools can dramatically speed up the design-to-code process, they still fall short of delivering production-ready code on their own. The code generated by Figma’s Dev Mode or AI-powered tools serves as a foundation—not the final product. Developers still need to refine the code, optimize performance, implement interactivity, and ensure responsiveness. In other words, Figma has made the process faster and more accurate, but the role of the developer remains as crucial as ever in ensuring that the final product meets industry standards.
In conclusion, Figma's Dev Mode and AI tools are impressive and valuable additions to the design and development toolkit. They can enhance productivity, reduce miscommunication, and simplify the handoff process—but production-ready code still requires a human touch. As AI continues to improve, we may see more advanced features that help with complex coding tasks. But for now, Figma provides a solid starting point, and teams will need to combine these tools with the expertise and skills of developers to create truly production-quality applications.
As Figma evolves, so too will its developer handoff capabilities. The future is bright, but for now, remember: Dev Mode is a great assistant, but not a complete solution.
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