Figma (Framelink)
Framelink's Figma MCP server, published on npm as figma-developer-mcp, is a community package that reads Figma files through Figma's REST API and hands an agent a trimmed layout description instead of raw design JSON. It is the popular unofficial route from a Figma frame to generated code, and it wants a Figma personal access token before it does anything useful.
How we started it
npx -y figma-developer-mcpUse it, but not the way we tried to. We started it exactly as the harness starts everything, over stdio with a clean environment, and it never completed the handshake: it printed that an HTTP server was listening on port 3333 and sat there until our boot timeout after 90s fired. That is a transport mismatch, not a broken package, and the fix is a command-line flag plus a token. The real reason against is that you are trusting a community server with a Figma access token that can read every file your account can.
Use it if
Skip it if
The bill for your context window
No token weight came out of our run. The handshake never finished, so there is no tools/list payload to weigh, and a token count we did not measure is a number we will not print. What we can say is where the weight would land if you get it running. Framelink's tool surface is small by reputation, so the cost that matters is not the tool list but the responses: a large frame's node tree is the thing that fills your window, and how aggressively the server trims that tree before handing it over is the entire value proposition. Budget by frame size, not by tool count.
Setup reality
Two things stand between you and a working server. First, transport: run as-is, it starts a StreamableHTTP endpoint (the stderr also advertises an /sse path for older clients) rather than talking stdio, so a stdio client waits forever. The README documents a --stdio flag for that case. Second, credentials: a Figma personal access token, passed as an argument or an env var. Our probe scraped no env-var hints from stderr because the process never got far enough to complain about a missing token. Telemetry is on by default and the startup line tells you how to turn it off, which is more courtesy than most packages manage.
Questions people ask
Why did the Figma MCP server hang instead of starting?
Because it defaults to an HTTP transport. Our clean-environment probe watched it bind a local port and announce its endpoint, then time out waiting for a stdio JSON-RPC reply that was never coming. Add the stdio flag your client needs and the hang goes away.
Do I need a Figma paid plan or an API token?
You need a personal access token from your Figma account settings; the server has no other way to reach the API. Treat it as a read credential for every file that account can open, and prefer a scoped token if your plan offers one.
Is this the official Figma MCP server?
No. This is Framelink's community package. Figma ships its own dev-mode server separately, and running both means two overlapping design integrations competing for the same slot in your tool list.
Other creative servers we started
| Server | Vendor | Boots | Context tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blender | community | ✗ | ~0 tokens |
How this page is made: the server is spawned as an unprivileged user with a clean environment and no credentials, then asked for its tools, resources and prompts over stdio. Token figures are estimates at four characters per token, not a tokenizer count. One run, one machine. Corrections: contact the desk.