I stopped starting my designs in Figma

For most of my career, a design went from a product spec straight to Figma. I spent about 80% of my time there, making every button pixel perfect, then handed the file to the engineers.

That's not the job anymore. Now I start in Claude Code, inside the repo, where most of the context already lives. I dictate everything else I know, add the requirements and the feedback from the team, and ask for five completely different directions.

I flip through them and leave comments right on the designs. The comments go back to Claude, and we go again. Once one direction wins, I go vertical: the copy, the spacing, the colors, the radii.

Around that sit the things I couldn't easily do before. Paper MCP for fast iterations on a canvas. Subtle sound effects from cuelume. Shaders. A taste file of things I never want to see, eyebrow text for one. And image models for logos and bold visuals.

Figma is still a good design tool. It's just not where I start anymore.