What you can import
Two transports, split by what Figma exposes: assets, tokens, and components run over the REST API (headless, works in CI, generous per-minute rate limits). Motion and shaders exist only on Figma’s MCP server, so an agent drives those. Every path freezes files locally — renders never call Figma.
One-time setup
There are two credentials, and most people only need to set up one to start:
Do both if your project needs everything; each is independent, so it doesn’t matter which you set up first.
Step A — Figma token (assets, tokens, components)
Needed for anything you run from thehyperframes figma CLI.
1
Mint a token
In Figma: Settings → Security → Personal access tokens → Generate new token.
2
Check these scopes
Read-only is all it ever needs — the integration never writes to Figma. On most accounts (not Figma Enterprise), check exactly these three:
- File content — Read-only
- File metadata — Read-only
- Library content — Read-only — easy to miss, and without it
tokens403s the moment it tries the published-styles fallback
tokens. Not on Enterprise? Skip it — tokens falls back to published styles automatically, or use the MCP connector (Step B) instead, which reaches variables on any plan.3
Export it
.env so future sessions skip this step. The same token covers every Figma file your account can view.Step B — Figma MCP connector (motion, shaders, storyboards — and an easier token-free path to brand colors)
No token, no scopes to pick — connect it once when your agent asks (a one-click OAuth) and it stays connected. This is also the easiest way to pull brand colors on any Figma plan, including free: the connector’s variable-reading tool isn’t Enterprise-gated, only rate-limited by plan — Starter/free caps at 6 calls/month, a paid Full/Dev seat gets 200–600/day. Fine for an occasional brand pull; not for iterating call-by-call.Import an asset
.media/images/, and the command prints a ready-to-paste <img> snippet:
--format svg|png|jpg|pdf(defaultsvg). SVG for logos and vectors — scalable and animatable.--format png --scale 2for raster fidelity.- Accepted refs: a full Figma URL with
?node-id=…(right-click a layer → Copy link) orfileKey:nodeIdshorthand. Asset and component imports always target a specific node; onlytokenstakes a barefileKey. - Idempotent: the manifest records
fileKey:nodeId:format:scale:version, so re-running reuses the file unless the design actually changed in Figma.
Pull your brand
figma-tokens.json sidecar plus a binding index, and prints entries for the composition’s data-composition-variables. Every scene that references a brand role — instead of a hard-coded hex — is on-brand automatically, and stays on-brand when the file changes.
Import a component
compositions/components/<name>/. Vector and boolean-op nodes that don’t map to clean HTML auto-rasterize through the asset path.
Colors bound to a Figma variable resolve against your imported tokens:
- Bound to an imported token → emitted as
var(--brand-slug, #0066FF)— a later brand refresh propagates into the component. - Bound to a token you haven’t imported → the literal color is used and the element is flagged
data-figma-unresolved. The command tells you; runtokenson the source (or library) file and re-import to link them.
Motion, shaders, and storyboards
These run through the/figma agent skill:
- Motion — a Figma Motion timeline (keyframes, easing, repeats) translates structurally into a paused, finite GSAP timeline registered on
window.__timelines, seekable frame-by-frame like any hand-authored animation, and editable afterward. Tracks that can’t translate faithfully fall back to a baked video clip — the agent tells you which path it took and why. - Shaders — Figma’s export path doesn’t execute shaders, so the default is a native Figma export (PNG or Motion MP4) imported as an asset/clip.
- Storyboards — a section of scene frames is decoded, not slideshowed: frames sharing an element are treated as that element’s keyframes over time, diffed into element chains and tweened, with text under the strip read as director notes. When the frames depict one product UI in successive states, the agent escalates further — rebuilds the UI as live DOM and performs each frame delta as a real interaction (cursor, click, navigation), so the result reads as a continuous screen recording. See the
/figmaskill for the full grammar.
Provenance and refresh
Every import records where it came from (fileKey, nodeId, version) in .media/manifest.jsonl. Nothing in a rendered composition points at Figma — assets are files, tokens are variables, motion is a timeline. When the Figma file moves on, re-running the same import commands re-pulls only what changed.