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Developers currently have to manually type text from Figma prototypes during design hand-off, especially when frames are clipped or they lack edit access. An AI plugin should allow them to directly copy text from the design preview to streamline their workflow.
I tried to build my first simple figma plugin with AI recently and my journey to build it taught me some lessons. It started with a common frustration of a developer while a design hand-off: developers generally have to manually type the existing text in the design while developing looking at the prototype. There was a doubt from developer if there is a way to directly copy text from our scrollable design prototypes which would make their job easy. They can still access it through figma file, but the figma frames were clipped which would cause the developers to touch the design or would need edit access to the design. This made me think of an idea. The goal seemed straightforward: create a plugin through A.I that allows us to copy text from the preview. But what I thought would be a quick win turned into a frustrating loop. I used different A.I models to create this but all of them had their own flaws in providing the right code. Every time I generated the code, it had one or the other issues. Firstly the frame was not rendering as the design. Layers were scattered. The previews were breaking and not all the layers in the frame were visible. If I tried to fix the tables, it was having issues with z-index of layers. When I fixed the layer order, the tables would not be visible. It was a classic case of "one step forward, two steps back. At the end I was not able to produce a fully working plugin. the plugin was still working in pieces though :( My key takeaways from this journey: ✅ The simplest user problems can hide immense technical depth. What looks like a minor inconvenience can be a symptom of a deeply complex architectural challenge. ✅ The most robust solutions often work with the platform's structure, not against it. Replicating the design's nested hierarchy was the key to making everything click into place. It was a valuable experience. Huge respect for the engineers. Ever fallen down a "simple problem" rabbit hole? Would love to hear your stories!