I was the first designer in my org to ship AI-assisted code. Then I showed everyone else how.
Visual bugs were deprioritised, so I used AI to fix them myself — contributing directly into the codebase as the first designer in the organisation to do it.
The session showed designers had the appetite and desire to contribute to code — the harder problem was the setup, not the code. Which is exactly the problem Figma Make on your local codebase is built to solve.
Shipping code as a designer
Engineers had bigger problems than visual bugs — so they stayed unfixed, quietly contributing to a lower quality product. I used AI to contribute the fixes directly into the codebase myself, then ran a session sharing the approach with the wider design org.
The process worked, but it wasn't saving time. Local environment setup, IDE configuration, and code errors unrelated to the design problem kept breaking the flow. Small changes were often harder than they needed to be. That overhead is what stops most designers from ever trying. Remove that friction, and this workflow becomes accessible to any designer.
