Figma Launches Specs: Design Rules Written as Markdown on the Canvas, for Its Own Agent and for Outside Coding Agents Like Codex

What Specs is

On October 15, at its first Config event in India, Figma launched Specs, now in open beta on paid plans across web, desktop and mobile.

A spec is a multiplayer Markdown document that lives on the Figma canvas: drag any .md file onto the canvas and it becomes a spec, or press D to create one. Frames, FigJam diagrams and code layers can be embedded directly, so there is no need to paste screenshots. Teams write brand rules, component guidance and PRDs there, and people and agents read the same document.

How agents use it

Figma's own agent (which left beta on October 6 and is billed in AI credits) can read and reply to comments in a spec, expand a PRD and edit the content directly; with the GitHub connector it can also draft a technical spec from a codebase.

Outside agents go through MCP: coding agents such as Codex read a spec, plus its linked frames, diagrams, code layers and Code Connect snippets, through the Figma MCP server. Using it is simple: paste the spec's link into the coding agent's prompt. Figma MCP also added 20 new partners.

The other update at the event

Code layers, in private beta since June, have moved into open beta. They generate interactive, code-backed prototypes from a design frame, a GitHub repo, a captured website or a prompt. Creating and editing code layers is free on paid plans through November 4; Figma hasn't said what pricing applies after that.

Why write a spec at all

Figma chief design officer Loredana Crisan told TechCrunch that 17 times more code is being produced than before, while releases have grown only 1.3 times, with much of that code written to explore the product. Agent output varies from run to run; the idea behind Specs is to make design rules a fixed input for agents rather than something re-explained in every prompt. For teams already using coding agents to build front ends, the thing worth testing is moving their existing design rules into a spec and seeing whether generated interfaces drift less from the component library.