Despite concerns raised by Figma, co-founder Dylan Field, regarding MCP (which includes model, context, protocol; a model context protocol), this design company continues to expand its support for this open-source standard. The MCP standard is used to regulate how AI intelligents communicate with external data sources and tools.
At the first Config conference held in India by Figma, the company announced the addition of 20 new MCP partners, including Amp, ClickUp, Dia, Junie, by, JetBrains, Linear, Mistral, Notion, OpenCode, and Sarvam Agents.
Field has also expressed dissatisfaction with MCP in the past. Just a few days before the release of this announcement, one of the co-creators of MCP complained that Figma did not support this open-source tool Pi. In response, Field also mentioned that Anthropic did not provide various resources through MCP.
He wrote on X: "What I find very interesting is that Anthropic (the creator of the MCP standard) has not made artifacts / other cloud resources public through MCP. The discussion has been framed as an open vs. closed issue. Clearly, people always prefer openness... At the same time, the problem of asymmetric context sharing has been overlooked."
(Field later added that Figma plans to support Pi.)
At a media briefing, I asked Field about this debate. Field explained that although Figma hopes to remain open, he does not consider MCP to be a perfect protocol.
"I'm very excited about what we're doing in terms of open ecosystems. I also believe that MCP is not a perfect protocol, and there's still a lot of room for improvement," the co-founder responded. "It's more beneficial for cutting-edge laboratories. I understand those people online who just want a protocol so that they can use Figma data when needed, and I hope they can make use of it as well."
The CEO of Figma stated that the reason the company does not want to fully open up is that the more data is exposed through MCP, the higher the likelihood of it being misused.
He also clarified that although most users do not intend to use the MCP or Figma data maliciously, the company still must consider these potential risks.
