Ever wonder how a design tool can start talking to AI while you’re still figuring out the spec?
⚡ TL;DR: Figma’s Jesse Lumarie built an MCP server in weeks, using React/Tailwind to feed scene‑graph data to LLMs, learned that pixel‑perfect output isn’t enough and switched to sending component pointers for enterprise‑ready accessibility.
The Simple Version
Think of Figma as a digital canvas that wants to speak the same language as a large language model.
How It Actually Works
Scene Graph Representation
Figma’s canvas is a C++ scene graph that mirrors a DOM.
🎯 Think of it this way: It’s like a LEGO set where each brick knows its shape and color.
Choosing React & Tailwind
They guessed models have seen the most React/Tailwind markup, so they used it to render output.
Why Images Fail
Sending base64 images blew up the context window and got truncated.