"For years, we've preached the gospel of the design system as the "single source of truth." We built libraries, evangelised tokens, and perfected our handoffs. However, despite all our efforts, the system often remained just that: a library. It was a meticulously organised collection of design assets that lived next to the real product, a reference file that designers owned and everyone else chased."
"The New Way: With Figma Make now supporting npm package imports, designers can pull actual production React components from the design system's codebase directly onto the canvas. We are no longer building with pictures of buttons; we are building with the real button. This makes the prototype an interactive, high-fidelity extension of the product itself, not just a drawing of it."
For years design systems served as static reference libraries of tokens and assets that lived next to the real product and created ownership gaps. The 2025 Figma Config and Schema changes make the design system an active engine built with three pillars: interactive, intelligent, and integrated. Interactive changes allow designers to import production React components (npm packages) into the canvas, replacing pictorial components with real components and turning prototypes into high-fidelity, interactive extensions of the product. The component-to-code race ends when design files use production code components, making the system an interactive toolkit rather than a static reference.
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