I've been a designer for 29 years and I keep seeing the same pattern with AI coding tools like Claude Code: designers are either sticking with the full Figma workflow and handing off to AI for code generation, or they're skipping Figma entirely and going straight to prompts.
Both approaches feel incomplete to me. The first one doesn't take advantage of what AI can actually do. The second one throws away the entire design process.
I've been experimenting with a different approach: encoding the design process directly into the AI tool. Things like having the LLM stress-test your requirements before generating anything, creating a proper design brief, structuring information architecture, generating design tokens, and running autonomous design reviews using Playwright.
The idea is that instead of replacing Figma, you're replacing the process gap between "I have an idea" and "here's a working frontend." The design thinking still happens. It just happens inside the coding tool instead of on a canvas.
For anyone curious, I open-sourced the skills I built for this: github.com/julianoczkowski/designer-skills
How are other designers here handling this? Are you still doing everything in Figma first, or are you finding ways to work directly with AI coding tools?