Figma Console MCP exports tokens in 10 formats. It still needs Figma
By The WAALEE Team · · 4 min read
Figma Console MCP just shipped one of the more useful things to land in the design-tokens-for-AI space this year: a `figma_export_tokens` tool with ten fully implemented output formats, DTCG JSON, CSS, Tailwind v3 and v4, SCSS, TypeScript, and more, with zero third-party build-tool dependencies. Pair that with the bidirectional `figma_import_tokens` sync it added for round-tripping code changes back into Figma variables, and you've got something that genuinely replaces a Style Dictionary pipeline for a lot of teams. It's a solid piece of engineering. It also runs on the same assumption every Figma-token tool has run on since this category started: the tokens already exist, as variables, in a Figma file someone maintains.
What it actually does well
Per the project's own changelog, the latest release speaks DTCG 2025.10 on request, with the legacy hex dialect as the default for backward compatibility, and applies a full diff plan on import: creates, renames, alias re-targeting, replace-gated deletes. That's a real round-trip, not a one-way export. If your team already has a component library with properly structured variables in Figma, this tool turns "ask a designer to export tokens" into something Claude Code or Cursor can call directly over MCP, no manual hand-off, no stale JSON file sitting in a repo from three months ago.
The step before step one
None of that helps if there's no Figma file to point it at. Most companies past their first few months don't have a maintained token library in Figma. They have a shipped website. Maybe a Figma file exists somewhere, started by a contractor, abandoned after launch, missing half the components that shipped since. Pointing an MCP server at that file gets you variables that don't match what's actually live. The real design system, the one customers see, is sitting in the rendered page, not the design tool.
- A founder who hired a no-code builder or a freelancer and never got a Figma file back.
- A team whose Figma library drifted out of sync with the live site two redesigns ago.
- Anyone benchmarking a competitor's site, where there's no file to request access to.
- A rebrand where the new site shipped before the design system was ever formalized anywhere.
Read the rendered page instead
A live site is the same system, computed. Fonts resolved, colors rendered, spacing laid out in actual pixels, just without a Figma variable name attached to any of it. Point a tool at the URL instead of the file and you get the same shape of output Figma Console MCP produces, DTCG-format tokens ready for Claude, Cursor, or whatever's writing the code, minus the requirement that someone already did the design-ops work in Figma first. The output formats converge; the input doesn't have to.
Three ways to get design tokens into an AI coding agent right now, and what each one assumes you already have:
- Figma Console MCP: Exports Figma variables to DTCG 2025.10, CSS, Tailwind, SCSS, TS and more over MCP, with full bidirectional sync. Requires an existing Figma file with real variables set up.
- Style Dictionary: The long-standing open-source token build pipeline this new tool is explicitly positioned to replace. Still needs a source tokens file to transform, from Figma or hand-written.
- WAALEE: Paste any live URL, no Figma file or token file required, and get real colors, type scale, spacing, and W3C tokens back as AI-ready prompts for Claude, Lovable, v0, Cursor, and Bolt.
Use the one that matches your source of truth
This isn't a knock on Figma Console MCP, shipping a dependency-free export across ten formats with a real round-trip is hard, and teams with a maintained Figma library should use it. The gap is the same one this category keeps leaving in the same place: an export pipeline is only as good as what's already structured on the other end of it. If your brand's actual source of truth is a live URL instead of a Figma file, the fix isn't a better export format, it's reading the page the system was actually built on.