Figma file prep, not prompting, decides Claude Code output

Masaki Hirokawa, a solo developer writing on Claude Lab, documents his workflow for turning Figma files into working code through Figma MCP, the connector that feeds Claude Code a file's layer hierarchy, design tokens and component metadata. His central finding is that generation quality is set before any prompt is written: renaming layers by role, promoting repeated elements to Figma components, and replacing absolute coordinates with Auto Layout determine whether the output is reusable and responsive or a tangle of duplicated, fixed-position markup. He estimates fifteen to twenty minutes of file preparation eliminates hours of post-generation rework, and separately notes that MCP depends on the Figma desktop app running locally, which breaks unattended batch generation unless the design JSON is exported in advance.