Figma just transformed from design tool to wannabe development platform at Config 2025. As app makers who've seen tools come and go, we're cutting through the hype to explain what these shiny new AI toys actually mean for your team, your workflow, and your app's future. Spoiler: It's complicated.
Let's be real: Config 2025 was Figma's "we're-not-just-for-designers-anymore" coming out party. With 8,500 attendees hopped up on overpriced SF coffee while watching demos, Figma unveiled not one but FOUR new products aimed at taking a bigger piece of the product development pie. As veterans who've built hundreds of apps, we've seen this movie before – and we're here to give you the director's cut on what actually matters.
Figma Make: The "No-Code" Plot Twist That Actually Needs Code Knowledge
Figma Make grabbed all the headlines with its AI-powered design-to-prototype magic show. Powered by Anthropic's Claude 3.7 model (hello there, Claude!), it promises to turn your static designs into functioning prototypes without writing code. Having spent years in the trenches turning designs into actual production apps, we've got thoughts.
What they're promising:
- Designers generate functional prototypes through text prompts or existing design
- Point-and-modify any design element through natural language
- Inline text/container editing through a toolbar (like coding, but not coding...right?)
- Direct code tweaking for customization (wait, I thought we weren't coding?)
- One-click publishing of prototypes as web apps (sounds familiar...)
The reality check: The demos were truly impressive—data viz, responsive layouts, animations—but we've learned through 100+ app projects that there's always a gap between demo magic and production reality. For simple prototypes? Game-changer. For actual production apps with security, performance, and maintainability requirements? Let's not throw away our keyboards just yet.
Figma Make is in beta for paid plan users, currently free with usage limits. Translation: get ready for that premium tier announcement when you're hooked on the workflow.
Figma Sites: Webflow and Framer Are Sweating, But Should Your Development Team?
Figma Sites is basically "what if we Webflow'd our design tool?" – addressing the eternal designer plea: "just let me publish this beautiful thing without developer drama."
Figma Sites.
The shiny features:
- Copy-paste from Figma Design to Sites (the digital equivalent of "it worked on my machine")
- 50+ templates for the "I need it yesterday" projects
- All the responsive goodies: auto layout, grid, breakpoints
- Component variants for consistent UI (a real win, actually)
- Interactions and fancy effects like custom cursors and hover states
- Figma Make integration for the extra-special sauce
- CMS functionality coming soon (the eternal "coming soon")
Figma Sites: Copy designs straight into Sites and start building—no dev required.
Using Claude 3.7, users can generate components and integrate these with Figma Make for more magic-making goodness.
The experienced perspective: We've built hundreds of websites and web apps—some simple, some incredibly complex. Sites will absolutely streamline simple marketing pages and portfolios. But real-world web apps need infrastructure, security, API integrations, user management, and performance optimization.
For marketing sites? Figma just eliminated a whole category of projects. For real web apps? You still need experienced developers who understand systems, not just surfaces.
Currently in beta for paid plans, with free custom domains through 2025. Classic "first taste is free" strategy.
Dev Mode Upgrades: The Actually Useful Part That No One's Talking About
While everyone's buzzing about AI magic, Figma quietly dropped some legitimately helpful developer workflow improvements. As a team that's managed hundreds of design-to-development handoffs, these updates solve real problems:
Ready for Dev View finally gives developers a unified list of what's actually ready to build, with clear indications of who changed what and when. After years of "is this the final version?" Slack messages, this is the real MVP.
Focus View creates a distraction-free zone for developers that filters out design exploration noise. No more "ignore artboards 1-47" instructions.
Grid Support that actually aligns with CSS Grid is chef's kiss. The responsive design features generate appropriate CSS, potentially saving hours of tedious translation work.
Code Connect graduated from beta to general availability (for the premium tiers, naturally), with support for React, React Native, iOS, and Android. The component code snippets and improved property mapping could genuinely save development time.
These improvements won't make headlines like the AI features, but they solve everyday friction points that we've experienced firsthand. Sometimes the mundane updates are the most impactful for daily workflows.
Figma Grid: No more manual spacing tweaks—grid aligns with real-world styling standards.
The AI All-You-Can-Eat Buffet: More Toys Than You Can Actually Use
Figma's going all-in on AI across their entire platform. It's not just features—it's a foundational shift in how they view the future of product creation.
The AI smorgasbord includes:
- Choose-your-fighter image generation models (GPT, Gemini, or Titan)
- One-click background removal (goodbye, painful masking sessions)
- Visual search using images or descriptions (actually useful!)
- Auto-naming and organization (for people who name files "final_final_FINAL_v2")
- AI text generation and replacement (lorem ipsum is so 2023)
CEO Dylan Field claims: "In a world where AI makes it easier than ever to build software, design will become more essential and powerful." Translation: "Please don't replace your design team just because you have AI."
Generate images using GPT, Gemini, or Titan—because creativity deserves options.
The Real Strategy: Figma Wants to Be Your Everything
Let's call this what it is: Figma's transformation from design tool to full-stack product development platform puts them in direct competition with:
- Webflow and Wix (website builders)
- Bubble and other no-code platforms
- Canva (marketing asset creation)
- And of course, their almost-acquirer Adobe
The business numbers tell the real story:
- Two-thirds of users aren't traditional designers anymore
- 30% identify as developers (this is huge)
- 85% of monthly active users are outside the US
- More than half of revenue comes from international markets
Our take: Figma is playing the platform expansion game. Start with design, expand to everything adjacent. It's classic land-and-expand, powered by AI as the accelerant. Every tool company wants to be your entire workflow, not just one piece of it.
The Industry Reaction: Everyone's Feigning Enthusiasm While Updating Their Resumes
The reactions are predictably mixed, with the loudest voices being the most optimistic (funny how that works). Designers are excited about new creative powers, while developers are doing that nervous laugh thing while saying "this is fine."
Figma's own research shows a telling contradiction: 52% of AI tool builders think design is MORE important for AI products, yet only 32% of professionals fully trust AI output. That 68% skepticism? That's where quality engineering lives.
The most telling reaction is how carefully Figma positions code generation as "augmenting workflows rather than replacing developers." They're walking the fine line between "this will change everything" marketing and "don't worry about your job" reassurances.
Pricing: The "We'll Figure Out How To Monetize This Later" Strategy
- Figma Make: Beta for paid users. Free now, but premium pricing inevitable.
- Figma Sites: Beta for paid users. Free domains until you're dependent on it.
- Figma Draw: Available now for all paid tiers.
- Figma Buzz: Beta for everyone, will be paid later.
- Grid: Open beta for paid users.
- Content Seat: New $8/month tier for marketing teams.
What This Actually Means For Your App Development
After building hundreds of apps at Camber, here's our data-driven take on what Figma's expansion really means:
For marketing sites and simple web apps: Figma Sites will genuinely accelerate production. We could see 30-40% faster delivery for straightforward projects.
For AI-assisted prototyping: Figma Make will dramatically speed up the exploration phase, but there's still a Grand Canyon between impressive prototypes and production-ready code that works at scale.
For enterprise and complex applications: These tools will improve workflow and exploration, but won't replace the need for experienced developers who understand architecture, security, performance optimization, and system design.
For the designer-developer relationship: The most exciting aspect is how these tools might create a more collaborative middle ground between design and development, potentially eliminating the most frustrating parts of handoff.
The tools themselves aren't revolutionary—similar capabilities exist elsewhere—but putting them directly in the design workflow is the real innovation. It's not about whether AI can generate code; it's about whether it can generate the RIGHT code in the right context.
What we've learned building apps for over a decade: Tools change constantly, but fundamentals don't. Great apps still require deep understanding of users, thoughtful system design, and collaborative problem-solving. Figma's new tools will accelerate parts of the process, but the real magic still happens in the space between designers, developers, and users.
Need help navigating how these changes affect your app development process? That's literally what we do all day. Drop us a line to talk about how to integrate these new tools into a workflow that actually produces results.
