When Figma Make Broke My Trust (and Yours Too, Apparently)

Figma Make: Great Ideas, Nowhere to Go

Apparently my Figma Make post on LinkedIn resonated with the design community. What started as a straightforward beta test turned into a broader conversation about trust, expectations, and the future of design tools.

For those who missed it, I spent two days testing Figma Make after finally getting access. The TL;DR: While it shows promise—fast generation, solid UI quality with Shadcn components, and impressive handling of complex interactions—it falls short on its core promise of "one-to-one" design fidelity. When I pasted a well-structured Figma file, fonts were wrong, sizing was off, and worst of all, when I manually fixed things, the AI overwrote my changes on the next iteration. That's when it lost me.

The bigger issue? It's a dead end by design. You can't bring Make files back into Figma Design or Sites, and the code export is broken (no package.json). You're trapped in Figma's closed ecosystem.

The comments revealed I wasn't alone in my frustrations.

The trust issue struck a particularly deep chord. As Muriel Naim put it: "the biggest thing you can lose while building a less-than-superb AI motion is also the most important one to your customers: Trust." This sentiment echoed throughout the responses, with many noting that Figma's pattern of overpromising at keynotes only to deliver half-baked features is eroding their credibility.

The beta defense came up repeatedly, but the community was divided. While some argued that bugs are expected in beta software, others countered that shipping unfinished products just to chase AI headlines has become the norm. As one commenter noted, "In an AI age apparently you don't need to release polished product." The consensus seemed to be that beta or not, the fundamental design decisions (like the closed ecosystem) aren't just bugs—they're architectural choices that likely won't change.

Perhaps most telling was the desire for workflow integration rather than another separate product. Chris Jones summed it up perfectly: "I want all the make functionality within the Figma file vs. some new product." Multiple designers imagined a world where Make lived inside the Figma canvas, allowing seamless back-and-forth between manual design work and AI assistance. Instead, we got what Adam Korman called "a completely siloed experience that's basically a wrapper around another tool."

My sincere hope is that Figma takes the feedback they’re hearing from the community and make Make better before general release. Despite the criticism, they have engendered a lot of goodwill in the design community. They are well-positioned to offer a product that is indispensable to our workflows.

The engagement on this post—hundreds of reactions and dozens of thoughtful comments—tells me this isn't just about one tool's shortcomings. It's about a fundamental question: How should AI integrate into our existing design workflows? And more importantly, can we trust the tools we've relied on to get it right?

What's your take on Figma's AI direction? Hit reply and let me know.

Highlighted Links

What I’m Consuming

Stitch by Google: design with AI. I can’t believe that this one has slipped through the cracks. This is Google’s version of Lovable or Figma Make. I’ll post my thoughts on this at some point too.

‘LegoGPT’ designs Lego models with nothing but a prompt. LEGO + AI. ’Nuff said, right?

Sam and Jony and skepticism. Always good to read a contrarian view, right? Thoughtful piece by one of my favorite Mac writers, Jason Snell.

What Are People Still Doing on X? I quit Twitter/X many months ago, completely deleting my account. Charlie Warzel posits, “Imagine if your favorite neighborhood bar turned into a Nazi hangout.”

Cruising. This is my most favorite thing I’ve read in weeks. Paul Soulellis takes us on a journey that starts with a reflection on gay cruising and turns it into an anthropological history of the LGBTQ+ community as told through fonts and read-me files in zip packages.

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