{"slug": "figma", "name": "Figma", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "Browser-based collaborative interface design and prototyping tool, with FigJam whiteboarding.", "recommenders": 13, "commenters": 36, "warners": 4, "score": 13.093, "rising": 2.38, "first": "2025-11-27", "latest": "2026-10-07", "why": "Liked for shared design libraries and team collaboration, and for refining AI-drafted layouts with precise constraints.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 13, "neutral": 17, "compare": 3, "warn": 4}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 4, 0, 2, 0, 3, 1, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Team design systems", "Collaboration and planning"], "caveat": "Replaced by AI/code", "short_quote": "Figma and Figjam are really great tools for design and planning.", "icon": true, "domain": "figma.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.figma.com", "pricing": "freemium", "aliases": ["Figma"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for shared design libraries and team collaboration,", "cites": [{"id": 765010784, "item_id": 47813174, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47813174", "by": "dbg31415", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I LOVE Figma", "excerpt": "Modern Figma design libraries are one of the best things to happen to product teams in the last 20 years. Reusable components. Shared styles. Auto layout. Variants. Design tokens. So many useful plugins! Interactive prototypes. Dev mode handoff. Versioned libraries. A single source of truth keeping designers, engineers, and PMs speaking the same language. It's fucking bliss when you use it right. And best of all, any", "context": "works with product teams", "use_case": "design systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Design"}, {"id": 764913169, "item_id": 47807073, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47807073", "by": "ossa-ma", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which is what Figma boards and Canva is good for, also mainly for cross-collaboration", "excerpt": "The more I think about it the more this isn't good for design [EDIT], for a few reasons: - The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive. An AI model is incapable of that, it's uninspired, it will absolutely converge to the norm and homogeneity (you see it everywhere now, just scroll on ShowHN and take a look at the UIs) and produce the safest design that appeals to its understanding of the i", "context": "", "use_case": "design inspiration and collaboration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Design"}, {"id": 746984930, "item_id": 46686558, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686558", "by": "kingkongjaffa", "date": "2026-01-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Figma and Figjam are really great tools for design and planning.", "excerpt": "Ruff solved python formatting and linting. uv solved packaging. Both were better in terms of user ergonomics and also much faster that what we used before, black, mypy, pylint etc. IDK it Typescript is too generic but TS made me think of javascript as a proper language and not something just to do silly little animations on websites for. Types unlock proper data modeling and application code to me. Figma and Figjam a", "context": "", "use_case": "design and planning", "switched_from": "Sketch", "story": "Ask HN: What non-LLM tools have meaningfully improved your dev productivity?"}, {"id": 745777712, "item_id": 46611107, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611107", "by": "fathermarz", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Usually with Figma screens people can review etc as things go.", "excerpt": "We built an MVP for a startup, then forked the front end to extend to the prototype vision of where we want to go. We use the prototype to dream and when we need to implement the front end of a feature we already understand how it would fit in to the product. Easier to scope. One thing I have found coming from enterprise is, stakeholder design meetings get way more fun and much faster. In enterprise, everyone gives n", "context": "", "use_case": "design review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Is \"AI vibe coding\" making prototyping worse inside real companies?"}]}, {"text": " and for refining AI-drafted layouts with precise constraints.", "cites": [{"id": 774942449, "item_id": 48433903, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48433903", "by": "bradleykingz", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "figma allows me to set proper constraints (screen size, for example), that give it a more grounded \"shape\"", "excerpt": "honestly, for me, chatgpt has more replaced dribbble than it has figma. where i'd normally spend hours combing through dribbble looking for inspiration for layouts for specific components (most of the time finding nothing), now I use chatgpt to come up with a number of different designs, then port them over to figma. most designs produced by cgpt arent production-ready, especially for mobile. figma allows me to set p", "context": "mobile app designer/developer", "use_case": "final UI design", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}, {"id": 774925601, "item_id": 48432850, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432850", "by": "epolanski", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "prototype almost exclusively in claude and then when happy refine in figma", "excerpt": "I use claude design too. It has been suggested to me by some very respected and experienced designers which now prototype almost exclusively in claude and then when happy refine in figma. By the way, you can always tune your prompts to not be generic, if you ask for generic UIs without detailed styling prompts you will get generic designs.", "context": "", "use_case": "refining designs", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}, {"id": 758199476, "item_id": 47387467, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387467", "by": "dielll", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "opened figma, used it to refine it to what I wanted", "excerpt": "I have had the experience with creating https://swiftbook.dev/learn Used Codex for the whole project. At first I used claude for the architect of the backend since thats where I usually work and got experience in. The code runner and API endpoints were easy to create for the first prototype. But then it got to the UI and here's where sh1t got real. The first UI was in react though I had specifically told it to use Vu", "context": "", "use_case": "UI design refinement", "switched_from": "", "story": "100 hour gap between a vibecoded prototype and a working product"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is that some commenters now design in code or AI tools,", "cites": [{"id": 737208643, "item_id": 46075540, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075540", "by": "tonyoconnell", "date": "2025-11-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I switched from Macromedia (acquired by Adobe) Fireworks to Sketch to Figma", "excerpt": "Hello. I was delighted to see Penpot get a lot of traction when Adobe were going to buy Figma. I'm not a fan of Adobe because they killed so many of my favourite products. I switched from Macromedia (acquired by Adobe) Fireworks to Sketch to Figma and probably would have moved from Figma to Penpot already but I simply don't need Figma anymore. I use Shadcn UI and Claude Code to do my design these days without every h", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "Sketch", "story": "Penpot: The Open-Source Figma"}, {"id": 787078385, "item_id": 49192399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192399", "by": "b1z0n", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I replaced Figma with Claude SVG magic.", "excerpt": "I replaced Figma with Claude SVG magic. I am very bad at design and have no taste, but it somehow managed to create this skill that continuously gives me images for my project thumbnails mechanically (not AI-generated images).", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What paid tools have you now replaced with personalized AI-coded tools?"}, {"id": 774918193, "item_id": 48432387, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432387", "by": "t0mas88", "date": "2026-06-06", "stance": "compare", "quote": "building a quick (not production quality) frontend demo in code was already often faster than getting the right interaction working in Figma", "excerpt": "I use the same approach a lot. Before AI I also did this manually. First sit down with a user and just paper and pencil, then hack together a frontend POC / demo, have them play with it and adjust until it works as they wanted. For me building a quick (not production quality) frontend demo in code was already often faster than getting the right interaction working in Figma. And it allowed to make it fully interactive", "context": "", "use_case": "interaction prototyping", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}]}, {"text": " leaving Figma as an expensive ideation step that can invite early detail arguments.", "cites": [{"id": 778348800, "item_id": 48646800, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48646800", "by": "theanswa", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Figma has become a very expensive virtual whiteboard.", "excerpt": "We're two product designers at Fern and we recently rebuilt the buildwithfern.com site in five weeks with no developer help. The three things worth mentioning here from the blog: - Figma has become a very expensive virtual whiteboard. It\u2019s still in our loop, but only as a starting point for ideation and moodboarding. Then we quickly move to claude.ai/design for iteration and Claude Code to build. The code is the sour", "context": "product designer", "use_case": "ideation and moodboarding", "switched_from": "", "story": "How 2 Designers ditched Figma (sort of) to rebuild a marketing site"}, {"id": 745118208, "item_id": 46569888, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569888", "by": "drob518", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I really like this idea. I\u2019ve seen teams get stuck quibbling about details too early while using Figma. I see how this totally sidesteps that problem, similar to working with analog drawings, but with the advantage that it\u2019s still electronic so you can stuff it into your repo and version it and also feed it into an LLM easily. I\u2019m really curious how the LLM \u201csees\u201d it. Sure, it\u2019s characters, but it\u2019s not language. Reg", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "ASCII-Driven Development"}, {"id": 782454609, "item_id": 48903413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48903413", "by": "legitster", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Sketch and the Figma came along and sold design teams a world of endless pedantic arguments about the right hues for buttons.", "excerpt": "> \u201cIf we use art that looks nearly complete, then people would think that that\u2019s going to be the final art. It has to look like shit. It\u2019s important that it looks like shit.\u201d This is actually really good productivity advice. Intentionally circumvent problems you are not ready for, but make it impossible not to circle back on them later. This ties back into the classic \"premature optimization is the root of all evil\" ", "context": "", "use_case": "UI design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Slay the Spire 2 Is Choosing \"Shit\" Art over Generative AI"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Team design systems", "summary": "Reusable components, shared styles, variants and versioned libraries keep designers, engineers and PMs aligned.", "quotes": [{"id": 765010784, "item_id": 47813174, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47813174", "by": "dbg31415", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I LOVE Figma", "excerpt": "Modern Figma design libraries are one of the best things to happen to product teams in the last 20 years. Reusable components. Shared styles. Auto layout. Variants. Design tokens. So many useful plugins! Interactive prototypes. Dev mode handoff. Versioned libraries. A single source of truth keeping designers, engineers, and PMs speaking the same language. It's fucking bliss when you use it right. And best of all, any", "context": "works with product teams", "use_case": "design systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Design"}, {"id": 794311408, "item_id": 49644463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644463", "by": "dkh", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "an entire well-crafted design system and design language in Figma", "excerpt": "Where do you consider the line here to be? What if the design and the core code is mine but I use AI to apply it to additional elements, pages, etc (something I do a fair amount)? What if I designed, or had a very good human designer design, an entire well-crafted design system and design language in Figma but feed it to AI to help turn it into static assets? What if all I used AI for was to more quickly drive tediou", "context": "designs and builds sites", "use_case": "design systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021"}, {"id": 745777712, "item_id": 46611107, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611107", "by": "fathermarz", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Usually with Figma screens people can review etc as things go.", "excerpt": "We built an MVP for a startup, then forked the front end to extend to the prototype vision of where we want to go. We use the prototype to dream and when we need to implement the front end of a feature we already understand how it would fit in to the product. Easier to scope. One thing I have found coming from enterprise is, stakeholder design meetings get way more fun and much faster. In enterprise, everyone gives n", "context": "", "use_case": "design review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Is \"AI vibe coding\" making prototyping worse inside real companies?"}]}, {"label": "Collaboration and planning", "summary": "Figma boards and FigJam are praised for design planning and cross-team collaboration.", "quotes": [{"id": 746984930, "item_id": 46686558, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686558", "by": "kingkongjaffa", "date": "2026-01-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Figma and Figjam are really great tools for design and planning.", "excerpt": "Ruff solved python formatting and linting. uv solved packaging. Both were better in terms of user ergonomics and also much faster that what we used before, black, mypy, pylint etc. IDK it Typescript is too generic but TS made me think of javascript as a proper language and not something just to do silly little animations on websites for. Types unlock proper data modeling and application code to me. Figma and Figjam a", "context": "", "use_case": "design and planning", "switched_from": "Sketch", "story": "Ask HN: What non-LLM tools have meaningfully improved your dev productivity?"}, {"id": 764913169, "item_id": 47807073, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47807073", "by": "ossa-ma", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which is what Figma boards and Canva is good for, also mainly for cross-collaboration", "excerpt": "The more I think about it the more this isn't good for design [EDIT], for a few reasons: - The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive. An AI model is incapable of that, it's uninspired, it will absolutely converge to the norm and homogeneity (you see it everywhere now, just scroll on ShowHN and take a look at the UIs) and produce the safest design that appeals to its understanding of the i", "context": "", "use_case": "design inspiration and collaboration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Design"}, {"id": 754830178, "item_id": 47176886, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47176886", "by": "ishandeveloper", "date": "2026-02-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the same reason I love Figma and Google Docs", "excerpt": "- On Remotion, yeah, not sure it's the right fit, but honestly the sheer capability of models at writing code these days has surprised me. Funnily enough, this is how I used to make small graphics for videos 2-3 years back when I knew nothing about After Effects. We've been eager to experiment with this for a while, just have to prioritize other user requests for now. Will definitely try a few approaches and see what", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Launch HN: Cardboard (YC W26) \u2013 Agentic video editor"}]}, {"label": "Final design refinement", "summary": "Used to polish and constrain designs after drafting them in AI tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 774942449, "item_id": 48433903, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48433903", "by": "bradleykingz", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "figma allows me to set proper constraints (screen size, for example), that give it a more grounded \"shape\"", "excerpt": "honestly, for me, chatgpt has more replaced dribbble than it has figma. where i'd normally spend hours combing through dribbble looking for inspiration for layouts for specific components (most of the time finding nothing), now I use chatgpt to come up with a number of different designs, then port them over to figma. most designs produced by cgpt arent production-ready, especially for mobile. figma allows me to set p", "context": "mobile app designer/developer", "use_case": "final UI design", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}, {"id": 774925601, "item_id": 48432850, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432850", "by": "epolanski", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "prototype almost exclusively in claude and then when happy refine in figma", "excerpt": "I use claude design too. It has been suggested to me by some very respected and experienced designers which now prototype almost exclusively in claude and then when happy refine in figma. By the way, you can always tune your prompts to not be generic, if you ask for generic UIs without detailed styling prompts you will get generic designs.", "context": "", "use_case": "refining designs", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}, {"id": 758199476, "item_id": 47387467, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387467", "by": "dielll", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "opened figma, used it to refine it to what I wanted", "excerpt": "I have had the experience with creating https://swiftbook.dev/learn Used Codex for the whole project. At first I used claude for the architect of the backend since thats where I usually work and got experience in. The code runner and API endpoints were easy to create for the first prototype. But then it got to the UI and here's where sh1t got real. The first UI was in react though I had specifically told it to use Vu", "context": "", "use_case": "UI design refinement", "switched_from": "", "story": "100 hour gap between a vibecoded prototype and a working product"}]}, {"label": "Plugins and automation", "summary": "The plugin API and MCP integrations let users and agents control Figma.", "quotes": [{"id": 798845328, "item_id": 49927833, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49927833", "by": "joombaga", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "This is what I use. Load a little shim plugin and control it with whatever you want.", "excerpt": "You can use their plugin API. https://developers.figma.com/docs/plugins/ This is what I use. Load a little shim plugin and control it with whatever you want. I made the plugin poll an http server that listens for commands.", "context": "", "use_case": "controlling Figma via plugin API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Figma restricts MCP access to whitelisted clients, excluding Pi"}, {"id": 794530656, "item_id": 49658166, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49658166", "by": "jasonjmcghee", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I'm using something like figma or glean or playwright/chrome dev tools, plugin/skill/mcp - likely very useful.", "excerpt": "I see the same thing and have effectively the same philosophy. If I'm using something like figma or glean or playwright/chrome dev tools, plugin/skill/mcp - likely very useful. But so many of the weird collections of skills that people on YouTube get viral followings for - I just don't get it. People excitedly ask me what skills I use and I feel bad just saying only things we've directly authored for some express pur", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "RTK reports token savings, but our cost benchmarks disagree"}, {"id": 780702304, "item_id": 48793894, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793894", "by": "raigol", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Tech: Figma + MCP, Claude Code + custom skills", "excerpt": "\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 SEEKING CONTRACT WORK | Remote (CET timezone) | Senior Product Designer / Design Engineer \u00b7 Location: EU (Italy, CET timezone) Remote: Yes, async-comfortable Relocation: No Tech: Figma + MCP, Claude Code + custom skills, HTML/CSS, design systems, WCAG R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://www.raigo.design/cv_raigo-lilleberg.pdf Portfolio: https://raigo.design Email: hi@raigo.design \u00b7 Focus: the first mile of design matur", "context": "Senior product designer / design engineer", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}]}, {"label": "Web performance", "summary": "Cited as a strong web app that uses WebAssembly well, with smooth interactions.", "quotes": [{"id": 799874448, "item_id": 49992153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49992153", "by": "fg137", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Figma is doing quite well in that regard, especially with the use of WebAssembly.", "excerpt": "I understand all of that. It's a business decision, and I'm not sure if they made the right decision. Most client-only web applications are open source because they know there is no business in selling it as a service. Photopea somehow is an exception, but its business model is getting questionable which is not a surprise at all. It's also possible to use a combination of cloud based and local computation. Figma is d", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tell HN: GitHub refuses to remove cracked copies of my software after a month"}, {"id": 753034753, "item_id": 47064672, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064672", "by": "k1w1", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It is like the first time I used Figma", "excerpt": "This is magical. The bike suspension example is so satisfying to play with. The user interface interactions are so smooth. It is like the first time I used Figma ... but with physics.", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Q12 \u2013 A constraint-based 2D drawing tool"}]}, {"label": "Stable interface", "summary": "Long-time users value muscle memory built over years with its consistent UI.", "quotes": [{"id": 788548773, "item_id": 49284298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284298", "by": "GeneralMaximus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly.", "excerpt": "Why would you not? I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly. I have a decade (or more) of muscle memory around these apps. If they suddenly decided to adopt the look, feel, and conventions of their underlying host platform, I\u2019d be very upset. If I\u2019m using Emacs, I don\u2019t want to use Cmd+S to save my files on macOS and Ctrl+S on Windows. I\u2019ve already memorized C-x C-s. I don\u2019t want Ableton to adopt whatever new design", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 787449239, "item_id": 49215577, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49215577", "by": "rahulmax", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I craved to go back to Figma to polish and correct the interface", "excerpt": "Author here. Thank you very much for the kind words! I'm a product designer and a design engineer and I love tactile interfaces and typography. My goal was to challenge myself to build this purely by 'describing' the interface to an LLM, without giving it any image references. Being mosly working in Figma / Sketch for the past decade or so, the process was utterly painful and I craved to go back to Figma to polish an", "context": "", "use_case": "interface design", "switched_from": "", "story": "TypeStax: A type scale generator with vintage audio hardware interface"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Replaced by AI/code", "summary": "Some commenters now design with Claude, Shadcn or code prototypes instead of Figma.", "quotes": [{"id": 737208643, "item_id": 46075540, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075540", "by": "tonyoconnell", "date": "2025-11-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I switched from Macromedia (acquired by Adobe) Fireworks to Sketch to Figma", "excerpt": "Hello. I was delighted to see Penpot get a lot of traction when Adobe were going to buy Figma. I'm not a fan of Adobe because they killed so many of my favourite products. I switched from Macromedia (acquired by Adobe) Fireworks to Sketch to Figma and probably would have moved from Figma to Penpot already but I simply don't need Figma anymore. I use Shadcn UI and Claude Code to do my design these days without every h", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "Sketch", "story": "Penpot: The Open-Source Figma"}, {"id": 787078385, "item_id": 49192399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192399", "by": "b1z0n", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I replaced Figma with Claude SVG magic.", "excerpt": "I replaced Figma with Claude SVG magic. I am very bad at design and have no taste, but it somehow managed to create this skill that continuously gives me images for my project thumbnails mechanically (not AI-generated images).", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What paid tools have you now replaced with personalized AI-coded tools?"}, {"id": 774918193, "item_id": 48432387, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432387", "by": "t0mas88", "date": "2026-06-06", "stance": "compare", "quote": "building a quick (not production quality) frontend demo in code was already often faster than getting the right interaction working in Figma", "excerpt": "I use the same approach a lot. Before AI I also did this manually. First sit down with a user and just paper and pencil, then hack together a frontend POC / demo, have them play with it and adjust until it works as they wanted. For me building a quick (not production quality) frontend demo in code was already often faster than getting the right interaction working in Figma. And it allowed to make it fully interactive", "context": "", "use_case": "interaction prototyping", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}]}, {"label": "Cost", "summary": "One design team calls it a very expensive virtual whiteboard used only for ideation.", "quotes": [{"id": 778348800, "item_id": 48646800, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48646800", "by": "theanswa", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Figma has become a very expensive virtual whiteboard.", "excerpt": "We're two product designers at Fern and we recently rebuilt the buildwithfern.com site in five weeks with no developer help. The three things worth mentioning here from the blog: - Figma has become a very expensive virtual whiteboard. It\u2019s still in our loop, but only as a starting point for ideation and moodboarding. Then we quickly move to claude.ai/design for iteration and Claude Code to build. The code is the sour", "context": "product designer", "use_case": "ideation and moodboarding", "switched_from": "", "story": "How 2 Designers ditched Figma (sort of) to rebuild a marketing site"}]}, {"label": "Tokens and responsive", "summary": "Design tokens need a third-party plugin, responsive design is painful, and it lacks full HTML/CSS.", "quotes": [{"id": 763913377, "item_id": 47744586, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744586", "by": "mattkevan", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Figma still hasn\u2019t got any further in years - design tokens need a 3rd party plugin and responsive designs are a pain in the bum.", "excerpt": "I\u2019m making Bezier, a mac-native vector design app as an alternative to Figma and Sketch. Unlike those apps it has full support for design tokens and (so far) flexbox layouts. It can also export directly to HTML, rather than a fake preview mode. I\u2019m also working on full code-backed components, so you can go between code and design very easily. As a designer, I\u2019ve been frustrated for years by the gap between design and", "context": "designer", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"}, {"id": 786640177, "item_id": 49165011, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165011", "by": "imhoguy", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "unlike Figma it has full HTML/CSS capabilities available", "excerpt": "As decades-exp SWE I love using Claude Design for any kind of app and web development, because it gives much faster visual feedback loop than changing views within deep framework stack. It much easier to \"tell\" coding agent what I need instead of writing wall of prose to define visual stuff. I reminds me old WYSIWYG and unlike Figma it has full HTML/CSS capabilities available. How I work with it: - I ask agent to ext", "context": "decades-experienced SWE", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "LLMs reward expertise"}]}, {"label": "Early bikeshedding", "summary": "Teams can get stuck arguing over details like button hues too early.", "quotes": [{"id": 745118208, "item_id": 46569888, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569888", "by": "drob518", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I really like this idea. I\u2019ve seen teams get stuck quibbling about details too early while using Figma. I see how this totally sidesteps that problem, similar to working with analog drawings, but with the advantage that it\u2019s still electronic so you can stuff it into your repo and version it and also feed it into an LLM easily. I\u2019m really curious how the LLM \u201csees\u201d it. Sure, it\u2019s characters, but it\u2019s not language. Reg", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "ASCII-Driven Development"}, {"id": 782454609, "item_id": 48903413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48903413", "by": "legitster", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Sketch and the Figma came along and sold design teams a world of endless pedantic arguments about the right hues for buttons.", "excerpt": "> \u201cIf we use art that looks nearly complete, then people would think that that\u2019s going to be the final art. It has to look like shit. It\u2019s important that it looks like shit.\u201d This is actually really good productivity advice. Intentionally circumvent problems you are not ready for, but make it impossible not to circle back on them later. This ties back into the classic \"premature optimization is the root of all evil\" ", "context": "", "use_case": "UI design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Slay the Spire 2 Is Choosing \"Shit\" Art over Generative AI"}]}, {"label": "No offline desktop", "summary": "One commenter wishes it were an offline-usable desktop application.", "quotes": [{"id": 790142048, "item_id": 49383878, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383878", "by": "doodlesdev", "date": "2026-08-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Both are great _products_ and I use them", "excerpt": "There's friction to doing it this way right now, though. You lose out quickly on accessibility, SEO, performance and developer experience (you need developers that are more experienced). Unfortunately, thinking about it in terms of game theory [0], I believe this is a good thing: I don't want most websites migrating to canvas-like APIs for rendering. My web browser is my agent and I'd like it to mostly render DOM-ren", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "HTML Can Do That"}]}, {"label": "Corporate feel", "summary": "One user finds it geared toward corporate design documents rather than quick sketches.", "quotes": [{"id": 783956689, "item_id": 48997293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997293", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Figma seems designed for specifically corporate design documents which is icky.", "excerpt": "Sketch has always been the app I use for quick throwing-together of things. Figma seems designed for specifically corporate design documents which is icky.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple has decided to compete for creativity app users"}]}], "who": [{"by": "raigol", "context": "Senior product designer / design engineer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49930843", "date": "2026-10-02"}, {"by": "dkh", "context": "designs and builds sites", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644463", "date": "2026-09-10"}, {"by": "bradleykingz", "context": "mobile app designer/developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48433903", "date": "2026-06-07"}, {"by": "epolanski", "context": "webdev career", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410452", "date": "2026-06-05"}, {"by": "arecsu", "context": "creative", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870561", "date": "2026-04-22"}, {"by": "dbg31415", "context": "works with product teams", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47813174", "date": "2026-04-17"}, {"by": "suleimanyusuf", "context": "product designer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702321", "date": "2026-04-09"}, {"by": "jonnycoder", "context": "backend software engineer, amateur designer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919439", "date": "2026-02-06"}], "tags": ["for design teams", "for product designers", "for design-to-code handoff", "browser-based", "scriptable via plugins"], "use_cases": ["design", "design systems", "controlling figma via plugin api", "interface design", "agent gui automation", "ui design"], "compared": [{"slug": "claude-code", "name": "Claude Code", "co": 12, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 2}, {"slug": "sketch", "name": "Sketch", "co": 6, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "claude-design", "name": "Claude Design", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "claude", "name": "Claude", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "chatgpt", "name": "ChatGPT", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "penpot", "name": "Penpot", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "google-docs", "name": "Google Docs", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "canva", "name": "Canva", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48431981", "title": "I design with Claude more than Figma now", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47806725", "title": "Claude Design", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49982498", "title": "Tell HN: GitHub refuses to remove cracked copies of my software after a month", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922568", "title": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49922729", "title": "Figma restricts MCP access to whitelisted clients, excluding Pi", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49656471", "title": "RTK reports token savings, but our cost benchmarks disagree", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 2, "warn": 1, "recommend": 4}, "2026-05": {"warn": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1, "compare": 1, "recommend": 2, "warn": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 2, "warn": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-08": {"compare": 1, "neutral": 1, "recommend": 3}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 799874448, "item_id": 49992153, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49992153", "by": "fg137", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Figma is doing quite well in that regard, especially with the use of WebAssembly.", "excerpt": "I understand all of that. It's a business decision, and I'm not sure if they made the right decision. Most client-only web applications are open source because they know there is no business in selling it as a service. Photopea somehow is an exception, but its business model is getting questionable which is not a surprise at all. It's also possible to use a combination of cloud based and local computation. Figma is d", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Tell HN: GitHub refuses to remove cracked copies of my software after a month"}, {"id": 798893489, "item_id": 49930843, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49930843", "by": "raigol", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Tech: Claude Code (MCP, Skills etc), HTML/CSS, design systems, Figma, WCAG", "excerpt": "\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 SEEKING CONTRACT WORK | Remote (CET) | Sr Product Designer / Design Engineer \u00b7 Location: Italy (EU) Remote: Yes, async-comfortable Relocation: No Tech: Claude Code (MCP, Skills etc), HTML/CSS, design systems, Figma, WCAG CV: https://www.raigo.design/cv_raigo-lilleberg.pdf Portfolio: https://raigo.design Email: hi@raigo.design \u00b7 Focus. First mile of design maturity for small B2B software teams. Think UX", "context": "Senior product designer / design engineer", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (October 2026)"}, {"id": 798845328, "item_id": 49927833, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49927833", "by": "joombaga", "date": "2026-10-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "This is what I use. Load a little shim plugin and control it with whatever you want.", "excerpt": "You can use their plugin API. https://developers.figma.com/docs/plugins/ This is what I use. Load a little shim plugin and control it with whatever you want. I made the plugin poll an http server that listens for commands.", "context": "", "use_case": "controlling Figma via plugin API", "switched_from": "", "story": "Figma restricts MCP access to whitelisted clients, excluding Pi"}, {"id": 794530656, "item_id": 49658166, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49658166", "by": "jasonjmcghee", "date": "2026-09-11", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I'm using something like figma or glean or playwright/chrome dev tools, plugin/skill/mcp - likely very useful.", "excerpt": "I see the same thing and have effectively the same philosophy. If I'm using something like figma or glean or playwright/chrome dev tools, plugin/skill/mcp - likely very useful. But so many of the weird collections of skills that people on YouTube get viral followings for - I just don't get it. People excitedly ask me what skills I use and I feel bad just saying only things we've directly authored for some express pur", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "RTK reports token savings, but our cost benchmarks disagree"}, {"id": 794311408, "item_id": 49644463, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49644463", "by": "dkh", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "an entire well-crafted design system and design language in Figma", "excerpt": "Where do you consider the line here to be? What if the design and the core code is mine but I use AI to apply it to additional elements, pages, etc (something I do a fair amount)? What if I designed, or had a very good human designer design, an entire well-crafted design system and design language in Figma but feed it to AI to help turn it into static assets? What if all I used AI for was to more quickly drive tediou", "context": "designs and builds sites", "use_case": "design systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "The same nine streaming subscriptions cost $702/year more than in 2021"}, {"id": 793518944, "item_id": 49594934, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49594934", "by": "mikaTheThird", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "many apps I use nowadays are on the web, Figma, Canva, google docs, outlook", "excerpt": "Not sure about goverment requirements, but many apps I use nowadays are on the web, Figma, Canva, google docs, outlook and so on. There is not much need for a dedicated OS for most users.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Computers"}, {"id": 790142048, "item_id": 49383878, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383878", "by": "doodlesdev", "date": "2026-08-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Both are great _products_ and I use them", "excerpt": "There's friction to doing it this way right now, though. You lose out quickly on accessibility, SEO, performance and developer experience (you need developers that are more experienced). Unfortunately, thinking about it in terms of game theory [0], I believe this is a good thing: I don't want most websites migrating to canvas-like APIs for rendering. My web browser is my agent and I'd like it to mostly render DOM-ren", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "HTML Can Do That"}, {"id": 788548773, "item_id": 49284298, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49284298", "by": "GeneralMaximus", "date": "2026-08-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly.", "excerpt": "Why would you not? I use Ableton, Figma, and Emacs regularly. I have a decade (or more) of muscle memory around these apps. If they suddenly decided to adopt the look, feel, and conventions of their underlying host platform, I\u2019d be very upset. If I\u2019m using Emacs, I don\u2019t want to use Cmd+S to save my files on macOS and Ctrl+S on Windows. I\u2019ve already memorized C-x C-s. I don\u2019t want Ableton to adopt whatever new design", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "What's New in Flutter 3.47"}, {"id": 787449239, "item_id": 49215577, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49215577", "by": "rahulmax", "date": "2026-08-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I craved to go back to Figma to polish and correct the interface", "excerpt": "Author here. Thank you very much for the kind words! I'm a product designer and a design engineer and I love tactile interfaces and typography. My goal was to challenge myself to build this purely by 'describing' the interface to an LLM, without giving it any image references. Being mosly working in Figma / Sketch for the past decade or so, the process was utterly painful and I craved to go back to Figma to polish an", "context": "", "use_case": "interface design", "switched_from": "", "story": "TypeStax: A type scale generator with vintage audio hardware interface"}, {"id": 787078385, "item_id": 49192399, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192399", "by": "b1z0n", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I replaced Figma with Claude SVG magic.", "excerpt": "I replaced Figma with Claude SVG magic. I am very bad at design and have no taste, but it somehow managed to create this skill that continuously gives me images for my project thumbnails mechanically (not AI-generated images).", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What paid tools have you now replaced with personalized AI-coded tools?"}, {"id": 786640177, "item_id": 49165011, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165011", "by": "imhoguy", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "unlike Figma it has full HTML/CSS capabilities available", "excerpt": "As decades-exp SWE I love using Claude Design for any kind of app and web development, because it gives much faster visual feedback loop than changing views within deep framework stack. It much easier to \"tell\" coding agent what I need instead of writing wall of prose to define visual stuff. I reminds me old WYSIWYG and unlike Figma it has full HTML/CSS capabilities available. How I work with it: - I ask agent to ext", "context": "decades-experienced SWE", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "LLMs reward expertise"}, {"id": 783956689, "item_id": 48997293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997293", "by": "LoganDark", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Figma seems designed for specifically corporate design documents which is icky.", "excerpt": "Sketch has always been the app I use for quick throwing-together of things. Figma seems designed for specifically corporate design documents which is icky.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Apple has decided to compete for creativity app users"}, {"id": 783405249, "item_id": 48962828, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48962828", "by": "dandaka", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My agents are using headful Google Chrome and Figma.", "excerpt": "Few cases I have found very useful myself 1/ Using GUI software. My agents are using headful Google Chrome and Figma. It helps a lot to have separate environment, which is not interfering my main machine. 2/ Running long processes (1h+), so I can leave main machine closed. 3/ Running intensive processes. I use Gemma, Whisper and Qwen, which could burn main machine CPU and resources.", "context": "", "use_case": "agent GUI automation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide"}, {"id": 782454609, "item_id": 48903413, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48903413", "by": "legitster", "date": "2026-07-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Sketch and the Figma came along and sold design teams a world of endless pedantic arguments about the right hues for buttons.", "excerpt": "> \u201cIf we use art that looks nearly complete, then people would think that that\u2019s going to be the final art. It has to look like shit. It\u2019s important that it looks like shit.\u201d This is actually really good productivity advice. Intentionally circumvent problems you are not ready for, but make it impossible not to circle back on them later. This ties back into the classic \"premature optimization is the root of all evil\" ", "context": "", "use_case": "UI design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Slay the Spire 2 Is Choosing \"Shit\" Art over Generative AI"}, {"id": 780702304, "item_id": 48793894, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793894", "by": "raigol", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Tech: Figma + MCP, Claude Code + custom skills", "excerpt": "\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 SEEKING CONTRACT WORK | Remote (CET timezone) | Senior Product Designer / Design Engineer \u00b7 Location: EU (Italy, CET timezone) Remote: Yes, async-comfortable Relocation: No Tech: Figma + MCP, Claude Code + custom skills, HTML/CSS, design systems, WCAG R\u00e9sum\u00e9/CV: https://www.raigo.design/cv_raigo-lilleberg.pdf Portfolio: https://raigo.design Email: hi@raigo.design \u00b7 Focus: the first mile of design matur", "context": "Senior product designer / design engineer", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (July 2026)"}, {"id": 778348800, "item_id": 48646800, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48646800", "by": "theanswa", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Figma has become a very expensive virtual whiteboard.", "excerpt": "We're two product designers at Fern and we recently rebuilt the buildwithfern.com site in five weeks with no developer help. The three things worth mentioning here from the blog: - Figma has become a very expensive virtual whiteboard. It\u2019s still in our loop, but only as a starting point for ideation and moodboarding. Then we quickly move to claude.ai/design for iteration and Claude Code to build. The code is the sour", "context": "product designer", "use_case": "ideation and moodboarding", "switched_from": "", "story": "How 2 Designers ditched Figma (sort of) to rebuild a marketing site"}, {"id": 774944720, "item_id": 48434045, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48434045", "by": "mmarian", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Don't think it's worth the effort vs just Figma", "excerpt": "I heard design team is building sites to help better visualize what they want to do. Don't think it's worth the effort vs just Figma, but that's just me.", "context": "", "use_case": "design visualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Are people vibe coding internal tools at your companies?"}, {"id": 774942449, "item_id": 48433903, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48433903", "by": "bradleykingz", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "figma allows me to set proper constraints (screen size, for example), that give it a more grounded \"shape\"", "excerpt": "honestly, for me, chatgpt has more replaced dribbble than it has figma. where i'd normally spend hours combing through dribbble looking for inspiration for layouts for specific components (most of the time finding nothing), now I use chatgpt to come up with a number of different designs, then port them over to figma. most designs produced by cgpt arent production-ready, especially for mobile. figma allows me to set p", "context": "mobile app designer/developer", "use_case": "final UI design", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}, {"id": 774925601, "item_id": 48432850, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432850", "by": "epolanski", "date": "2026-06-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "prototype almost exclusively in claude and then when happy refine in figma", "excerpt": "I use claude design too. It has been suggested to me by some very respected and experienced designers which now prototype almost exclusively in claude and then when happy refine in figma. By the way, you can always tune your prompts to not be generic, if you ask for generic UIs without detailed styling prompts you will get generic designs.", "context": "", "use_case": "refining designs", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}, {"id": 774918193, "item_id": 48432387, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432387", "by": "t0mas88", "date": "2026-06-06", "stance": "compare", "quote": "building a quick (not production quality) frontend demo in code was already often faster than getting the right interaction working in Figma", "excerpt": "I use the same approach a lot. Before AI I also did this manually. First sit down with a user and just paper and pencil, then hack together a frontend POC / demo, have them play with it and adjust until it works as they wanted. For me building a quick (not production quality) frontend demo in code was already often faster than getting the right interaction working in Figma. And it allowed to make it fully interactive", "context": "", "use_case": "interaction prototyping", "switched_from": "", "story": "I design with Claude more than Figma now"}, {"id": 774567236, "item_id": 48410452, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410452", "by": "epolanski", "date": "2026-06-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used Figma and Adobe tools in my webdev career", "excerpt": "Also lack of specific software on the Linux side. Adobe suite (I used Figma and Adobe tools in my webdev career), PDF editing is a huge issue and lackluster on Linux, most of the office suite is not available natively on Linux (no, there's no valid replacements when your company is deep into VBA tooling, etc), PowerBI, but also many specific internal tools that many businesses have and have been developed as Windows-", "context": "webdev career", "use_case": "web design", "switched_from": "", "story": "WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access"}, {"id": 768485763, "item_id": 48030360, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48030360", "by": "amatecha", "date": "2026-05-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "\"Reconnect with Community\" tooltip covering some content on the left", "excerpt": "Any kind of tour/nag tooltip on any app/site I use stays up forever, until they hopefully finally realize I am never going to interact with their cognitive-energy-wasting noise that should never have been shown to begin with. I've had the \"try out dark mode\" tooltip showing on JIRA for months. Just don't show these. Don't waste people's time. There are sites I close and never come back to because they start with an u", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why Most Product Tours Get Skipped"}, {"id": 766672245, "item_id": 47917015, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917015", "by": "tekacs", "date": "2026-04-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Linear, Vercel, Figma, Notion, hell even Airtable... landed 'big'", "excerpt": "I would be curious what you think of the idea of Sail and Muddy being... small. Technically complex, but small in the mind of the user. Not lacking in features (you talked about that), but 'feeling small/bounded, and therefore with small divergence' to the user. Does that... fit at all with your mental model of them? I ask because I feel like Linear, Vercel, Figma, Notion, hell even Airtable... landed 'big' (felt lik", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Lessons from Building Multiplayer Browsers"}, {"id": 765928980, "item_id": 47870561, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870561", "by": "arecsu", "date": "2026-04-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Personally, I use Affinity, Resolve, Darktable, Blender, and Figma.", "excerpt": "Hey! Author here. Glad we're feeling the same. At the very end I've linked to another page where I maintain an organic list of software and interesting bits of internet that I admire and find useful as a creative, for other creatives alike. Just today for the purposes of ending my blog post in a good light I created the Software category in the directory, to list every alternative I found interesting to Adobe's offer", "context": "creative", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Adobe Is Cooked"}, {"id": 765010784, "item_id": 47813174, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47813174", "by": "dbg31415", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I LOVE Figma", "excerpt": "Modern Figma design libraries are one of the best things to happen to product teams in the last 20 years. Reusable components. Shared styles. Auto layout. Variants. Design tokens. So many useful plugins! Interactive prototypes. Dev mode handoff. Versioned libraries. A single source of truth keeping designers, engineers, and PMs speaking the same language. It's fucking bliss when you use it right. And best of all, any", "context": "works with product teams", "use_case": "design systems", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Design"}, {"id": 764918498, "item_id": 47807406, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47807406", "by": "martinald", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "all the UI/UX designers will continue using it for the forseeable", "excerpt": "Interesting! I wrote this approach up (more or less - extract design system -> make templates -> export) some time ago and I've found it unbelievably powerful: https://martinalderson.com/posts/how-to-make-great-looking-consistent-reports-with-claude-code-cowork-codex/. I use it all day every day with Claude Code. I sometimes wonder past code if this has had the biggest impact on my day to day productivity, either hav", "context": "", "use_case": "UI/UX design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Design"}, {"id": 764913169, "item_id": 47807073, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47807073", "by": "ossa-ma", "date": "2026-04-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "which is what Figma boards and Canva is good for, also mainly for cross-collaboration", "excerpt": "The more I think about it the more this isn't good for design [EDIT], for a few reasons: - The best design is original, groundbreaking and often counterintuitive. An AI model is incapable of that, it's uninspired, it will absolutely converge to the norm and homogeneity (you see it everywhere now, just scroll on ShowHN and take a look at the UIs) and produce the safest design that appeals to its understanding of the i", "context": "", "use_case": "design inspiration and collaboration", "switched_from": "", "story": "Claude Design"}, {"id": 763913377, "item_id": 47744586, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744586", "by": "mattkevan", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Figma still hasn\u2019t got any further in years - design tokens need a 3rd party plugin and responsive designs are a pain in the bum.", "excerpt": "I\u2019m making Bezier, a mac-native vector design app as an alternative to Figma and Sketch. Unlike those apps it has full support for design tokens and (so far) flexbox layouts. It can also export directly to HTML, rather than a fake preview mode. I\u2019m also working on full code-backed components, so you can go between code and design very easily. As a designer, I\u2019ve been frustrated for years by the gap between design and", "context": "designer", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"}, {"id": 763237136, "item_id": 47702321, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47702321", "by": "suleimanyusuf", "date": "2026-04-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Tools:         Figma \u00b7 Claude \u00b7 Framer \u00b7 Lottie \u00b7 AI workflows", "excerpt": "Location: Bangalore, India \u00b7 Remote Willing to: Relocate \u00b7 Remote-first preferred Tools: Figma \u00b7 Claude \u00b7 Framer \u00b7 Lottie \u00b7 AI workflows Portfolio: major-changes-221607.framer.app Email: suleimanyusufbiomedi720@gmail.com Resume : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ziZUiBGzYtHQERsdPBFYomt_EdwW1-mC/view About me : I designed checkout systems that process $150K in a single NFL game day \u2014 7,000 transactions, averaging 6 se", "context": "product designer", "use_case": "product design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2026)"}, {"id": 758199476, "item_id": 47387467, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47387467", "by": "dielll", "date": "2026-03-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "opened figma, used it to refine it to what I wanted", "excerpt": "I have had the experience with creating https://swiftbook.dev/learn Used Codex for the whole project. At first I used claude for the architect of the backend since thats where I usually work and got experience in. The code runner and API endpoints were easy to create for the first prototype. But then it got to the UI and here's where sh1t got real. The first UI was in react though I had specifically told it to use Vu", "context": "", "use_case": "UI design refinement", "switched_from": "", "story": "100 hour gap between a vibecoded prototype and a working product"}, {"id": 754830178, "item_id": 47176886, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47176886", "by": "ishandeveloper", "date": "2026-02-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the same reason I love Figma and Google Docs", "excerpt": "- On Remotion, yeah, not sure it's the right fit, but honestly the sheer capability of models at writing code these days has surprised me. Funnily enough, this is how I used to make small graphics for videos 2-3 years back when I knew nothing about After Effects. We've been eager to experiment with this for a while, just have to prioritize other user requests for now. Will definitely try a few approaches and see what", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Launch HN: Cardboard (YC W26) \u2013 Agentic video editor"}, {"id": 753188832, "item_id": 47074302, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47074302", "by": "embedding-shape", "date": "2026-02-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Typically I use Figma to create those screenshots", "excerpt": "Best I did was having instructions for it to use webdriver + browser screenshots, then I have baseline screenshots of how I want it to look, and instruct the agent to match against the screenshots and continue until implementation is aligned with the screenshots. Typically I use Figma to create those screenshots, then let the agent go wild as long as it manages to get the right results. Once first implementation is d", "context": "", "use_case": "design reference screenshots", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How do you employ LLMs for UI development?"}, {"id": 753034753, "item_id": 47064672, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47064672", "by": "k1w1", "date": "2026-02-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It is like the first time I used Figma", "excerpt": "This is magical. The bike suspension example is so satisfying to play with. The user interface interactions are so smooth. It is like the first time I used Figma ... but with physics.", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Q12 \u2013 A constraint-based 2D drawing tool"}, {"id": 750711024, "item_id": 46919439, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919439", "by": "jonnycoder", "date": "2026-02-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I found a figma template hosted on figma.site", "excerpt": "I like your website design, especially the two-column layout in most sections once I get past the hero image (full size screenshot). I found myself looking at all the images. The downside is that I did not really get any motivation to try it out or really understand how it could help me. I am a backend software engineer so I'm always on the lookout for a way to easily and simply create a professional looking landing ", "context": "backend software engineer, amateur designer", "use_case": "landing page templates", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use"}, {"id": 746984930, "item_id": 46686558, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46686558", "by": "kingkongjaffa", "date": "2026-01-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Figma and Figjam are really great tools for design and planning.", "excerpt": "Ruff solved python formatting and linting. uv solved packaging. Both were better in terms of user ergonomics and also much faster that what we used before, black, mypy, pylint etc. IDK it Typescript is too generic but TS made me think of javascript as a proper language and not something just to do silly little animations on websites for. Types unlock proper data modeling and application code to me. Figma and Figjam a", "context": "", "use_case": "design and planning", "switched_from": "Sketch", "story": "Ask HN: What non-LLM tools have meaningfully improved your dev productivity?"}, {"id": 745777712, "item_id": 46611107, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46611107", "by": "fathermarz", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Usually with Figma screens people can review etc as things go.", "excerpt": "We built an MVP for a startup, then forked the front end to extend to the prototype vision of where we want to go. We use the prototype to dream and when we need to implement the front end of a feature we already understand how it would fit in to the product. Easier to scope. One thing I have found coming from enterprise is, stakeholder design meetings get way more fun and much faster. In enterprise, everyone gives n", "context": "", "use_case": "design review", "switched_from": "", "story": "Is \"AI vibe coding\" making prototyping worse inside real companies?"}, {"id": 745118208, "item_id": 46569888, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569888", "by": "drob518", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I really like this idea. I\u2019ve seen teams get stuck quibbling about details too early while using Figma. I see how this totally sidesteps that problem, similar to working with analog drawings, but with the advantage that it\u2019s still electronic so you can stuff it into your repo and version it and also feed it into an LLM easily. I\u2019m really curious how the LLM \u201csees\u201d it. Sure, it\u2019s characters, but it\u2019s not language. Reg", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "", "story": "ASCII-Driven Development"}, {"id": 737208643, "item_id": 46075540, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46075540", "by": "tonyoconnell", "date": "2025-11-27", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I switched from Macromedia (acquired by Adobe) Fireworks to Sketch to Figma", "excerpt": "Hello. I was delighted to see Penpot get a lot of traction when Adobe were going to buy Figma. I'm not a fan of Adobe because they killed so many of my favourite products. I switched from Macromedia (acquired by Adobe) Fireworks to Sketch to Figma and probably would have moved from Figma to Penpot already but I simply don't need Figma anymore. I use Shadcn UI and Claude Code to do my design these days without every h", "context": "", "use_case": "design", "switched_from": "Sketch", "story": "Penpot: The Open-Source Figma"}]}