Your First Figma Export With OpenClaw: A Setup Guide for Designers and Developers

It’s Thursday afternoon and Ava needs the exact hex values from the latest brand refresh. The design team updated the primary palette two days ago, but the Figma file has 47 frames, 12 component sets, and a naming convention that changed halfway through the project. She could open Figma, hunt through the layers panel, click each color swatch, copy the value, and paste it into her code. For six colors, that’s maybe ten minutes. Assuming she finds the right frame on the first try. Assuming the colors she finds are the final versions and not the ones from the second round of revisions that live in a frame called “FINAL v3 (use this one).”

Or she could open WhatsApp and ask her Moltbot agent:

“Extract all colors from the Brand Refresh page in our design system file.”

Twelve seconds later, she has a formatted list. Every color, with its hex value, opacity, and the component it’s applied to. She pastes it into her CSS variables file and moves on with her afternoon.

That’s what the OpenClaw Figma skill does. It connects your AI agent to Figma’s design files and turns design analysis and asset export into a conversation. No more hunting through nested frames. No more “which version is current?” No more switching between Figma and your code editor twelve times per feature.

This guide walks through the complete setup from scratch — installing the skill, connecting it to your Figma account, and running your first export. If you’ve never used an OpenClaw skill before, you’ll be fine. We’ll cover everything.

Why Designers and Developers Want Figma in Their Agent

Figma is where designs live. Your codebase is where designs get implemented. The gap between them is filled with manual steps: inspecting layers, copying values, exporting assets, translating design tokens into code variables, checking dimensions, verifying spacing.

These steps aren’t hard. They’re just repetitive. And they add up. A developer implementing a new feature might reference Figma thirty or forty times in a single day. Each reference means opening the file, navigating to the right frame, finding the right element, and extracting the right value.

The figma skill by maddiedreese brings Figma into your OpenClaw agent’s toolkit. Three things make it useful in daily work.

Conversational access to design data. Instead of clicking through Figma’s layer tree, you ask your agent questions. “What’s the padding on the card component?” “What font size is the H2 heading?” “Show me all the icons on the navigation page.” The agent reads the Figma file and gives you the answer.

Asset export without opening Figma. Need the logo as a PNG at 2x? Need all the icons from a specific frame as SVGs? Ask your agent. It exports the assets and delivers them. No manual export dialog, no remembering which format and scale the team agreed on.

Design token extraction. Colors, typography, spacing, border radius — the building blocks of a design system. The skill can pull these values from a Figma file and format them as CSS variables, JSON tokens, or plain lists. One command replaces the manual process of clicking every element and writing down its properties.

If you’re already using OpenClaw for other tasks — managing projects through ClickUp, tracking tasks in Todoist, controlling smart home devices — adding Figma means your design workflow lives in the same conversation as everything else.

What You Need Before Starting

Before installing the Figma skill, make sure you have these basics covered.

A running OpenClaw agent. You need Moltbot, Clawdbot, or another OpenClaw-compatible agent already set up and connected to a messaging platform. If you haven’t done this yet, our getting started guide walks through the full process. Come back here once your agent responds to messages.

A Figma account. Free or paid. The skill works with both. You’ll generate a personal access token in Figma’s settings, which is how the skill authenticates.

Access to at least one Figma file. You’ll need the file URL or key for any file you want your agent to analyze. If you’re on a team plan, make sure your account has view access to the files you want to work with.

That’s it. No additional servers, no special hardware, no paid APIs beyond what Figma already provides.

Step 1: Generate a Figma Personal Access Token

The skill connects to Figma through their REST API, which requires a personal access token for authentication.

Open Figma in your browser. Click your profile icon in the top-left corner. Go to Settings. Scroll down to Personal access tokens. Click Generate new token.

Give it a descriptive name — something like “OpenClaw Agent” so you remember what it’s for six months from now. Copy the token immediately. Figma only shows it once. If you lose it, you’ll need to generate a new one.

Set the token as an environment variable on the machine running your OpenClaw agent:

export FIGMA_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_token_here

Add that line to your shell profile (.bashrc, .zshrc, or equivalent) so it persists when you restart your terminal or reboot the machine.

Step 2: Install the Figma Skill

With the token set, installation is one command:

clawhub install figma

If your agent is already running, you may need to restart it to pick up the new skill and environment variable:

openclaw restart

That’s the full installation. No config files to edit, no additional dependencies to install.

Step 3: Test the Connection

Send your agent a simple message to verify everything works:

List the pages in this Figma file: [paste your Figma file URL here]

If the connection is working, your agent responds with every page in the file, listed by name. If it returns an error, double-check two things: the access token is correct, and your Figma account has access to the file you’re querying.

A successful response looks something like:

• Page 1: Cover
• Page 2: Components
• Page 3: Dashboard v2
• Page 4: Mobile Screens
• Page 5: Design Tokens

Once you see that list, the skill is ready to use.

Step 4: Your First Design Export

Now for the part that actually saves time. Let’s export an asset from a Figma file.

Say you need the app logo as a PNG for a presentation. In Figma, that means navigating to the right frame, selecting the logo, opening the export panel, choosing PNG format, setting the scale, and clicking export. Maybe two minutes if you know exactly where the logo lives.

With the skill:

Export the logo from the Components page as a 2x PNG.

Your agent identifies the logo element on the Components page, exports it at 2x resolution as a PNG, and delivers the file. You download it from the chat window and drag it into your presentation.

For multiple assets:

Export all icons from the Icon Library frame as SVGs.

The agent exports each icon individually as an SVG file. You get a batch of clean, correctly-named SVG files without manually selecting and exporting each one.

This is particularly useful for developers who need assets but don’t live in Figma daily. Instead of pinging a designer and waiting for them to export the right files, you pull them yourself through your agent.

Common Tasks You Can Do Right Away

Once the skill is connected, here’s what most people use it for in the first week.

Extracting Colors

Design systems revolve around color palettes. Getting those colors into code means inspecting each swatch in Figma and copying its hex value. For a palette with 20 colors across primary, secondary, neutral, and semantic categories, that’s a lot of clicking.

Extract all colors from the Design Tokens page and format them as CSS custom properties.

Your agent reads every color value on the page and returns something like:

--color-primary-500: #2563EB;
--color-primary-600: #1D4ED8;
--color-secondary-500: #7C3AED;
--color-neutral-100: #F3F4F6;
--color-neutral-900: #111827;
--color-success: #059669;
--color-error: #DC2626;

Copy, paste into your stylesheet, done. What used to take fifteen minutes of clicking and typing takes one message.

Getting Component Dimensions

You’re implementing a card component. The design specifies exact dimensions, padding, border radius, and spacing. You could open Figma and inspect each property, or:

What are the dimensions and spacing values for the ProductCard component?

The agent reads the component’s properties and returns: width, height, padding (top, right, bottom, left), border radius, gap between child elements, and any constraints. All the numbers you need to write the CSS, delivered in one response.

Checking Typography

Font sizes, line heights, weights, and letter spacing across a design system can involve dozens of text styles. Extracting them manually means clicking each text element and reading the properties panel.

List all text styles used on the Dashboard page with their font family, size, weight, and line height.

Your agent returns a structured list:

That table goes straight into your typography documentation or style guide.

Syncing Design Tokens

If your team maintains a design token file — JSON, YAML, or a custom format — the Figma skill can help keep it current.

Extract all design tokens from the Tokens page and format as JSON.

{
  "color": {
    "primary": "#2563EB",
    "secondary": "#7C3AED",
    "background": "#FFFFFF",
    "surface": "#F9FAFB"
  },
  "spacing": {
    "xs": "4px",
    "sm": "8px",
    "md": "16px",
    "lg": "24px",
    "xl": "32px"
  },
  "borderRadius": {
    "sm": "4px",
    "md": "8px",
    "lg": "16px",
    "full": "9999px"
  }
}

Save that output to your tokens file and your codebase matches the latest design. When the design team updates the Figma file, run the same command again and diff the results. You’ll see exactly what changed.

Tips for Getting Better Results

The Figma skill works best when you give it enough context to find what you’re looking for. A few practices that help.

Reference pages by name. “Extract colors from the Design Tokens page” works better than “extract colors from the file.” Figma files can have dozens of pages, and specifying which one narrows the search.

Name your Figma layers clearly. The skill reads layer names to identify elements. A layer named “Primary Button” is easy to find. A layer named “Rectangle 47” requires guessing. If your team follows a consistent naming convention in Figma, the skill’s accuracy improves dramatically.

Use frame names for batch operations. If all your icons live in a frame called “Icon Library,” exporting them as a batch is straightforward. If they’re scattered across multiple frames with no grouping, the skill has to search harder and might miss some.

Be specific about export formats. “Export as SVG” is clear. “Export as PNG at 3x” is clear. “Export the images” is ambiguous — the skill will default to something reasonable, but specifying format and scale gives you exactly what you need.

Pairing Figma With Other Skills

The Figma skill handles design data. Other OpenClaw skills handle what you do with that data.

ClickUp for design task tracking. Extract a list of components from Figma, then use clickup to create implementation tasks for each one. “Create a ClickUp task for implementing the ProductCard component with these specs: [paste the dimensions from Figma].”

GitHub for code integration. If your team stores design tokens in a repository, use a GitHub skill to create a pull request with updated token values. Extract tokens from Figma, format them, and push the update — all from chat.

Meeting notes for design reviews. After a design review meeting, use meeting-notes to capture feedback, then reference the Figma file through your agent to check specific components that were discussed.

Browse the full media category for more skills related to design, image processing, and visual content.

Limitations Worth Knowing

The Figma skill is powerful for analysis and export. It has boundaries.

It reads Figma files. It doesn’t edit them. You can extract data, export assets, and analyze designs. You cannot move layers, change colors, or modify components through the skill. Figma’s editing tools remain in Figma.

Complex nested components can be tricky. Deeply nested component instances with overrides sometimes return properties from the base component rather than the instance. For simple components and direct frames, accuracy is high. For components four levels deep with multiple overrides, double-check the values.

File size affects response time. Large Figma files with hundreds of frames and thousands of layers take longer to analyze. A focused query (“get colors from Page 3”) is faster than a broad one (“analyze the entire file”).

Prototype interactions aren’t accessible. The skill reads static design data — frames, layers, styles, components. Interactive prototype flows, transitions, and animations aren’t part of what it can extract.

You need view access. The skill authenticates with your personal token, so it can only access files your Figma account can view. If a file is restricted to certain team members, your token needs to belong to an account with access.

FAQ

Do I need a paid Figma account to use the OpenClaw Figma skill?

No. The skill works with Figma’s REST API, which is available on free accounts. You can generate a personal access token on any Figma plan. The only limitation is file access — free accounts have fewer collaboration features, but the API works the same way.

Can the skill access Figma files shared with me by other people?

Yes, as long as your Figma account has view access to the file. If someone shared a file with you and you can open it in Figma, the skill can read it. Files you don’t have access to will return a permissions error.

What export formats does the skill support?

The skill supports PNG, SVG, JPG, and PDF exports. You can specify the scale factor for raster formats (1x, 2x, 3x, 4x). SVG exports are always vector and don’t have a scale parameter.

Can I use this to keep my design tokens automatically synced with code?

The skill doesn’t auto-sync on its own — it responds to your requests. But you can build a workflow where you periodically ask your agent to extract tokens from Figma and compare them against your code’s token file. If your team uses flowmind, you can automate this check as a recurring workflow.

Does the skill work with Figma’s Dev Mode?

The skill uses Figma’s REST API, which provides access to design data regardless of whether Dev Mode is enabled in the Figma file. However, Dev Mode-specific annotations and developer-focused metadata may not be fully accessible through the API. Standard properties like dimensions, colors, typography, and component structure are all available.

What to Try Next

Start with the basics. Install the skill, connect it to a Figma file you know well, and extract some colors. Once that feels natural, try exporting assets and pulling typography data. Build from there.

clawhub install figma

If you’re new to OpenClaw entirely, begin with How to Find and Install Free OpenClaw Skills — it covers agent setup, skill installation, and finding your way around the ecosystem.

For more media and design tools, browse the media category on Oh My OpenClaw. And if you want to combine Figma data with project management, check out the productivity category for skills like ClickUp and Todoist that pair naturally with design workflows.

The distance between a Figma file and working code is measured in small, repetitive steps. Clicking through layers, copying values, exporting assets, formatting tokens. The Figma skill doesn’t eliminate the work. It eliminates the clicking.