BACK
Quoth the Canvas, "Nevermore"
Figma is growing. I watch the changes with excitement but a little bit of sadness, and apprehension. Like watching a child grow out of their cute innocence into the murky waters of teens. My Figma is nevermore.
Config 2026 gave us six new features. I tried five of them this week. Here is my honest report from inside the house. Poe style 🐦⬛.
**weirdo alarm blaring loud: escape now if this seems too odd for you taste.**
The learning curve nobody is talking about
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary..." — Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Before we get to the features themselves, I want to say something that the hype cycle is skipping over:
Every year Figma gets more powerful for us designers..but every year the person onboarding into Figma for the first time has more to understand before they can do anything useful. And every year, the dream of "a non-designer can just use the AI to prototype something quickly" gets quietly harder to achieve, not easier, because they need to figure out what file type to use first!
Code Layers: a Mystery in plain view
"Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain... a little too self-evident." — Edgar Allan Poe, The Purloined Letter
It is a truly strong feature; design and code living side by side on the canvas, one click to switch, the gap between what you see and what gets built made visible at last. Love it.
But…it is for Figma Sites. And we already had Figma Make for building things. So what we have here is, essentially, Figma Make for Sites. Which is useful, but it is not new. It is the same idea relocated. The letter was already on the desk.
I don't want to be unfair: for web designers working in Sites, this is a meaningful addition. The ability to inspect and edit code directly on the canvas without leaving Figma is a lot less friction than the alternative. But for the rest of us product designers, this one feels like a feature for someone else.
Figma Motion: a tapping just beyond grasp
"I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?" — Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
I know the potential is in there. I can hear it. A full animation timeline, keyframes, presets, code export: the bones of something that should end the Principle/AE-to-Figma-to-developer translation nightmare that has existed since the beginning of design handoff. The export motion as code feature alone could change how teams work. That has been a point of friction in handoff for as long as I have been doing this. it is, in my humble opinion, the star of this entire Config.
But the UI. The UI is driving me slightly mad.
I have used Principle for years. I am used to states as frames, side by side, the animation implied by the relationship between them. Figma Motion's timeline is a different mental model entirely, and I have not made peace with it yet. What saved me was animating via chat. I will say this clearly: the chat animation is very good. I described what I wanted, it understood the gist immediately, it built something I could actually use. That part worked.
So this feature is currently a tale of two tools: a chat interface that is quietly excellent, wrapped in a visual UI that, for me at least, needs more time. Or more sessions. Or both.
The heart is beating. I just need to stop hearing it through the floorboards and start working with it properly.
Shader Fills and Effects: The lost Eldorado
"Gaily bedight, a gallant knight, in sunshine and in shadow, had journeyed long, singing a song, in search of Eldorado." — Edgar Allan Poe, Eldorado
Designers have been riding toward something for years: a way to make UI feel less like a grid of rectangles with colors applied. A way to bring texture, depth, material quality, life into interfaces without needing a graphic design degree or a motion team or time to learn their skills.
Shader fills and effects is Eldorado. I found it.
I loved this feature. I will not be subtle about it. The AI chat for shaders is truly impressive, not Config-keynote impressive. The creative space it opens for designers who are not primarily visual artists is awe-inspiring. UI design has been getting quite boring to be honest. Everything looks like everything. Shader fills give us back some room to go nuts..be expressive and original.
I am still riding, but I think I found Eldorado.
Generative Plugins: Don't throw yourself into the abyss
"We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss — we grow sick and dizzy... it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the keenness of the delight of its horror." — Edgar Allan Poe, The Imp of the Perverse
So you need a plugin that does one specific thing. You search the plugin marketplace. Yok. You know you shouldn't but you do it anyway. You end up building the plugin yourself, spending hours on it when you could have done the thing manually in minutes. Jumping into an abyss with no purpose.
Generative plugins solve this: describe the tool you need in plain language, and Figma will build it. No dev environment. No manifest file hunted across folders. It lives in Figma, it stays in Figma.
This is a smart feature. Honestly smart. I have lost more hours than I want to count to marketplace plugins that almost did what I needed.
I love my Claude-built plugins, I have to say that. I am not ready to crown a winner here. What Figma's generative plugins have is integration: no switching context, no external tool, just describe and use, and the result lives where the work lives. What Claude-built plugins have is depth, flexibility, and a track record I already trust. The jury is genuinely out.
Figma Agent Upgrades: the Masque of Red Death..not really
"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night." — Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death
The Figma Agent is great but it keeps hiding my frames.
Let me be fair first: the agent is powerful. I tested it on designing variants, building next screens in POCs, layer arrangement, manipulation, content creation. It can do a lot. And the sidebar with agent list and chat history is genuinely excellent; especially the thought of it in large design teams working in one file simultaneously.
But the interaction of toggling the agent felt awkward to me. The placement seemed off. Every time I needed to select a frame that was sitting behind or near where the agent decided to live, I was fighting it. A tool that hides the thing you need to work on is a tool with a placement problem.
I want to like this feature more than I currently do. The potential is real. The execution needs another round. It came in like a thief in the night and rearranged the furniture on its way through.
Figma Weave: The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
"The method of Dupin... is at best conjectural. In the present case... we must be guided by broader, by more general views." — Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt
I did not try it. Node-based generative workflows on the canvas are not something I have frequent use for, and I made a choice not to report on something I haven't honestly tested. That feels important to say plainly, in a world where everyone has a take on everything within hours of an announcement.
Try it yourself and share with me!
What Figma is becoming..A Dream Within a Dream
"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." — Edgar Allan Poe, A Dream Within a Dream
I started using Figma because it was fast, collaborative, and browser-based. Those things are still true. But the Figma I opened this week is not the Figma I learned. It is something larger, stranger, more powerful, and for a new user, entirely a different and more intimidating tool.
That is not a complaint. That is an observation.
The features from Config 2026 are not gimmicks. Shader fills and generative plugins are immediately useful. Motion's code export could change handoff permanently once the UI settles. The agent sidebar is a glimpse of how collaborative AI-assisted design might actually work in a real team. These are real additions.
But I have two questions that Config did not answer:
The first: I keep thinking about the new designer. The junior. The person from another discipline who was told "just use Figma, it has AI now." That person is not walking into a simple tool. They are walking into a house with many rooms, most of which require orientation before they become useful.
The second…and nobody seems to be asking this:what does all this AI usage actually cost? Shader generation, agent calls, motion via chat, generative plugins: none of this is cheap to run on the infrastructure side. Config said nothing about how heavy AI use reflects on billing. I have a personal subscription. I cannot speak to what this looks like at team or org level. But code generation is not free, and at some point Figma will have to have that conversation with its users. I would rather it happen before the invoice than after.
And so…
Tell this designer with nostalgia laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Figma of Yore
Quoth the Canvas “Nevermore.” —Hanan A.S 🙃
I think the market is open for the next simple tool. Just like Sketch took over when photoshop became too heavy, and Figma took over from Sketch as the cool & light web-based tool. Time for a new Figma?
—
'Till next time, lots of love and #keepdesigning!
Disclaimer: I openly use Edgar Allan Poe's work as a theme throughout this post. Poe's writing is in the public domain and belongs to everyone. The opinions about Figma are entirely mine. So are my Figma files, imperfect and beloved.
More