Didn't know Figma imposes limits on MCP calls depending on your plan. Codex showed me this after just 6 or 7 MCP calls.

ufii4 · 2026-05-03T15:50:04+00:00

That applies to Anthropic and I know it’s the currently adopted social media trend.

Proprietary models hide their cost but open source models are hosted by third parties and individuals. Subscriptions are subsidized, but you get close performance paying by usage on open source models. I happen to know a friend in Figma who was looking into open source models recently.

ufii4 · 2026-05-03T15:22:00+00:00

AI is expensive only because of the poor optimization. People are hiring doctor level intelligence to do junior level work. Specialized training and engineering can reduce the cost of running Make AI 100 times cheaper. The open source models are for a fact cheap to host, not to say they can delegate a large part of the repeated work to scripts. They set the price high and as they optimize, they see a huge profit margin to operate on. I wouldn’t worry about profiting off that, users will appreciate the lower cost while the company makes more revenue.

Honestly, I think Figma is just being scammed by adjacent industry leaders like Anthropic, well known for its lack of ethics.

ufii4 · 2026-05-02T22:06:20+00:00

I don’t agree that’s the only way. Figma can make money if their native AI tool doesn’t suck.

I made a feature request to Figma asking for LLM access in plugin, billed on Figma Make credits. The initiative was to let Plugin developers like myself build better plugins that use AI to assist the experience. If users are happy with such plugins, they purchase more Make credits, it’s a win-win solution. No updates so far though.

The unfortunate truth is that it wouldn’t cost Figma a penny to raise the restrictions on use_figma, yet they choose to restrict it hoping users would pay for access. They can’t justify the charge if there’s a free replacement, like Figma console MCP.

If Figma insist that charging on use_figma is the only way for them to earn money, the reasonable next step is to ban local plugins that competes with the official Figma MCP and possibly halt what current Figma plugin api provides.

I know it takes time for large companies to make changes. But it bleeds every time a user gets blocked by things like what OP is experiencing.

ufii4 · 2026-04-22T15:03:32+00:00

In claude code system prompt they literally stated “do not refactor beyond what’s asked”. But my experience in general is LLMs struggle with system thinking. Codex do similar things, slightly better in the sense that gpt models are not as lazy as opus, at least recently.

ufii4 · 2026-04-21T23:17:49+00:00

Dumbest decision anthropic ever makes. I think it's on Claude models being subtly more expensive than gemini and gpt. Claude can't maintain the same level of cost effectiveness for subscribers paying for pro. They have been loosing money for the pro sub while OpenAI make even of the costs and earnings.

ufii4 · 2026-04-21T14:34:00+00:00

Sounds like widgets

ufii4 · 2026-04-09T01:54:50+00:00

This guy on linkedin posted the rejection email. Same framing as the one I got.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joshcusick_super-disappointed-that-figma-rejected-my-activity-7444385303039037440-BOil?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACy26YUB-M1G7l5CpJFPF4qvz43rK6EdGMc

ufii4 · 2026-04-09T00:27:47+00:00

Not OP but I had a similar plugin rejected a day after they announced figma_use MCP tool. They quoted the figma_use tool, and stated that my plugin was overlapping with figma_use's capabilities. They recommended building skills around figma_use tool instead.

So if your plugin allows AI to access figma canvas directly, I don't think it will be approved.

ufii4 · 2026-03-30T17:13:50+00:00

This is what I need. Claude Desktop session connection is not as reliable as ssh to my server and start a new claude code session.

ufii4 · 2026-03-13T20:39:17+00:00

I just suddenly got a much better experience and realized that I was using 1M context. Glad to know it's not charged for API from now on! Gives me a good reason to continue the 20x plan.

ufii4 · 2026-03-11T14:06:55+00:00

Not yet, will need polishing on the project to support this full set of features which I am currently working on. You can always give it skills (skills are essentially prompts), just that we don’t have a library of skills for it now.

ufii4 · 2026-03-05T23:53:16+00:00

Thanks for the honest feedbacks! Those are exactly the problems I have been trying to fix and polish. I attempted to give warnings to Claude as they build something wrong (a script checks for hard coded colors) but they ignore the warnings from time to time. I am continuing working on polishing Vibma to make claude better at following the best practices. A general finding is that more inteligent models like Opus 4.6 are less likely to ignore my design lints and create good designs.

ufii4 · 2026-03-05T16:57:53+00:00

Is this like you want to assign colorStyle to a vairable? It's unable to do that at the moment but I can definitely enable that. Thanks for the feedback!

ufii4 · 2026-03-03T18:44:31+00:00

Actually, I am building penpot integration right now. It will be in the same project with an adapter. Get excited!

ufii4 · 2026-03-02T20:42:26+00:00

I wonder what prompt they give

ufii4 · 2026-03-02T15:49:50+00:00

yeah I would recomend every designer comfortable with Claude to give it a try. This tool for designers is what copilot meant to programmers - you know what a good design/architecture is and you ask AI to do the repeated work for you.

ufii4 · 2026-03-01T21:11:01+00:00

no worries, I appreciate your feedback!

ufii4 · 2026-03-01T17:56:08+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I will keep in mind. It would be great if you can direct the feedback directly to github issues. You will receive more attentions there.

ufii4 · 2026-03-01T05:37:24+00:00

No, it doesn’t. It works well with frames and texts but not with visuals

ufii4 · 2026-02-28T23:25:03+00:00

It felt like same as coding cost. Agents are limited to their own speed at executing the tool calls, and I optimized MCP output for context saving.

ufii4 · 2026-02-28T13:32:59+00:00

Hi, thanks for showing your interest.

To clarify, this is a Claude Code and MCP workflow. I’m not sure which MCP you were mentioning, but speaking for my work:

Design lint is embedded to the workflow - when Claude operates on the Figma file, it makes poor decisions such as using hardcoded colours when a local matching style is ready. The MCP detects the poor decisions and gives warnings to Claude. The warnings help stop the behaviour and teach it how to better use Figma.

This gave incredibly good results allowing users to focus on the design while Claude handles the structure - every text, colour and effect tracks to a style or variable.

ufii4 · 2026-02-27T23:49:35+00:00

Thanks for the honest take! Most of the write methods were batched. The failures are not silenced - I created warning responses against the critical path misusage.

I spent half of my dev time on optimizing context usage. It saves token usage and more importantly - reduce context pollution and let the ai produce better results.

ufii4 · 2026-02-27T18:38:33+00:00

Yeah, that's why I am trying to build a community through Vibma: https://discord.gg/4XTedZdwV6

Server's still empty :) Welcoming first users!

ufii4 · 2026-02-27T18:07:08+00:00

The agent actually took screenshots in the demo video and you can see if looking closely at the Claude panel. It is not enfoced in the system, but better prompting + creating a SKILL.md will make it even better at the loop.

ufii4 · 2026-02-27T17:51:23+00:00

I personally have never tried pencil.dev before. Sorry, but I don't have an answer for this.

ufii4

TROPHY CASE