Code to Design Isn’t the Point. System Parity Is.
Recently, a lot of attention has landed on Figma’s latest update around Claude Code to Figma, and specifically the new “Code to Canvas” workflow announced in partnership with Anthropic.
The short version: you can now take a working interface running in code (usually on localhost), capture it as a screenshot, and paste it into Figma as editable layers. It’s a neat trick that bridges the gap between a running prototype and the design canvas.
That’s genuinely useful.
It lowers friction. It gives teams something concrete to react to. It helps bridge early exploration and visual iteration.
But it also sparked a familiar debate:
Is this “the future” of design-to-dev? Does this replace system tooling? Is this competing with tools like Figma Console MCP?
After spending time testing it, demoing it, and talking with teams, my take is simple:
These tools aren’t competing. They’re operating at different layers of the stack.
And that distinction matters.
What Claude Code to Figma Does Well
The official Claude to Figma flow is strong at one thing: taking a real, running UI and bringing it onto the canvas.
That’s valuable when you’re:
- Prototyping quickly
- Pressure-testing flows
- Working through early product ideas
- Reviewing something with stakeholders
- Capturing exploratory work
You write code. You run it. You pull it into Figma. You iterate visually.
For many teams, especially in early-stage or marketing-heavy environments, that’s a big win. It turns “vibe-coded” prototypes into something shareable and discussable.
No argument there.
Where System Work Gets Hard
Design systems work breaks in different places.
The hard part isn’t generating screens. It’s managing:
- Token inheritance
- Variable propagation
- Component relationships
- Cross-file dependencies
- Governance
- Documentation
- Accessibility
- Versioning
- Parity between code and design
Once you’re operating across multiple teams and products, screenshots and layers stop being enough.
You need system awareness. You need tools that understand how the ecosystem behaves over time.
That’s the problem space Figma Console MCP was built for.
What Figma Console MCP Is Actually Doing
In a recent demo, we showed what this looks like in practice. Using Story UI, we:
- Generated a real UI from live components
- Ran it inside a development environment
- Let Figma Console MCP read that implementation
- Rebuilt it in Figma using system components, tokens, and variables
- Audited and corrected drift
- Added comments for designers to address discrepancies
End result: the same UI, mapped back into the design system. Not as screenshots. Not as generic layers. As governed system assets.
That’s the difference. You’re not just visualizing code. You’re reconciling it with your system.
If you’re curious about how that works under the hood, the full documentation lives at figma-console-mcp.southleft.com.
Video demo here:
Why Story UI Matters in This Workflow
Story UI plays a key role here. It’s an MCP-powered layout generator that works directly inside your Storybook environment. It discovers your real components and composes layouts using them.
That means your starting point is already system-aligned. Not mock components. Not approximations. Your actual library.
This is what makes the “code → system → design” loop viable.
Explore it: Introducing Story UI | Story UI on GitHub
The Real Difference: Visualization vs. Parity
At a high level, here’s what’s happening.
Claude Code to Figma:
- Pulls working UI into canvas
- Optimizes for speed and iteration
- Great for exploration
- Minimal system awareness
Figma Console MCP:
- Reads live implementations
- Maps them to system components
- Enforces token usage
- Supports governance and documentation
- Optimizes for durability
Both are useful. They just live at different layers.
One helps you see things. The other helps you keep things aligned.
This Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game
One thing that’s been encouraging to see is that these workflows are becoming mainstream. A few years ago, “code ↔ design parity” was niche. Now it’s table stakes. That’s good for everyone.
Long term, the most powerful setups will probably use both:
- Claude Code for rapid exploration
- Console MCP for system reconciliation
- Story UI for component-aware generation
- Documentation pipelines for handoff
All connected through MCP.
That’s where the “beautiful harmony” actually shows up. Not in one tool replacing another. In tools specializing and cooperating.
The Open Question: Roundtripping at Scale
One unresolved question remains: once you pull UI into Figma and change it, how reliably does it get back into production code?
Right now, that’s still fragile in most setups. Without strong componentization and system metadata, you’re often relying on “close enough” regeneration.
System-aware tooling is what makes that loop trustworthy. We’re not fully there yet. But we’re closer than we’ve ever been.
Final Thought
If you’re designing landing pages, early prototypes, or exploratory interfaces, the new Claude to Figma flow is a welcome addition.
If you’re running a multi-team design system, it won’t replace system tooling. And it doesn’t need to.
We’re finally seeing an ecosystem emerge where:
- Code isn’t isolated
- Design isn’t static
- Systems aren’t afterthoughts
- Context travels with the work
That’s the real shift. And it’s a good one.