Thread

Figma restricts MCP access to whitelisted clients, excluding Pi

187 points · 106 comments · thdr

miguel-muniz · 1790869419 · focus · HN ↗
For context: Figma has two MCPs. The local "dev" MCP that works through the Desktop app, and the remote MCP that requires a connection to Figma. Companies need to be whitelisted to use the remote MCP, which is the only one that allows agents edit access to Figma documents.
I only found out about Figma's limitation when I was trying to add the remote MCP server to GitHub Copilot Desktop and kept running into errors. Turns out they whitelisted GitHub Copilot CLI but not the Desktop app and had put a pause on enabling any more vendors. Eventually someone (not sure which side) got it working.
Kind of strange to limit edit access only to the Remote MCP when their competitors like Pen[1] and Paper[2] allow any local agent to edit.
[1] <a href="https://www.pen.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pen.dev/
[2] <a href="https://paper.design/" rel="nofollow">https://paper.design/
1. evek · 1790881198 · focus · HN ↗
  I’ve been using a 3rd party MCP that uses a desktop plugin as a bridge, it allows for llm driven design, export, etc.
  <a href="https://github.com/southleft/figma-console-mcp/tree/main" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/southleft/figma-console-mcp/tree/main
  No affiliation, just found it useful.
  1. radley · 1790902079 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, this one is the standard. It's pretty robust.

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