A designer’s guide to the Figma API

Part 1 of 7 — Understanding the API.

You can find the code for this tutorial here:

danhollick/FigmaAPIThing

At TIDAL, we have a comprehensive design system built in Figma. A little while ago, I decided to have a look at how we could use the Figma API to improve and maybe automate our workflow around this.

The problem I instantly ran into is that there are basically no resources out there demonstrating how to use it, especially at a lower technical level. So I thought I would write a little bit about how to get up and running and using the API.

It is a design tool after all, maybe designers should be able to use it. (This might be painfully slow for a more technical reader)

What you’ll need?

• A text editor. VSCode is good and free.
• Figma.
• A mac. (It should be trivial to adapt the example to Windows, but I rely on the terminal quite a lot.)
• Some fucks to give.

Step1: How the API…