Zach Leatherman

Figma Grid is here! (beta) It sounds great: organize, align, and place content into responsive layouts. But… It’s not really a full code like grid. It's more like a bento grid. 1. You can’t wrap items inside the grid. 2. No support for variables for gaps or sizes. 3. You can’t reuse column sizes as child sizes. 4. It is only responsive in one viewport at a time. So, if I want a 12-column grid on desktop and a 4-column one on mobile? Nope. If I want a 6-column child on desktop and full-width on mobile? Nope again. Config 2025 had a lot of cool stuff (Sites, Make, Draw with variables 😍), but GRID needs a lot more love. Please, Figma fix the grid. It could be amazing. 🙏

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Custom design system MCP + Figma MCP I figured out how to leverage a custom design system MCP server to rapidly build UIs with production components. Rather than creating prototypes that *look like* your design system, my approach allows you to build with actual production component code from your design system. It’s a shift from prompt-to-prototype towards prompt-to-production. Layering the Figma MCP and Windsurf’s visual editor on top of a custom design system MCP open up new ways to supercharge the design to production workflow. #designsystems #ai #mcp #figma #windsurf #vibecoding

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I’ve been playing with AI design tools for a while—initially as a way to move faster from intent to interface, and lately as something more. What caught my attention this past week wasn’t a new feature, but a pairing: Lovable running on Supabase. That detail shifted the frame for me. I care deeply about the front end—what our customers actually touch that improves their lives—and how my design teams can help define it faster, with greater clarity. But when tools like Lovable start partnering with infrastructure like Supabase, AI prompt design is no longer just about accelerating prototyping. It’s about collapsing entire layers of traditional ops and redefining where engineering effort gets applied. Supabase gives Lovable a real backend—live data, auth, persistence—without the drag of building scaffolding from scratch. Suddenly, you're not just seeing screens. You’re interacting with product-like behavior on day one. As a design org, that makes us force multipliers in a way that used to take a sprint cycle to even approximate. But the deeper shift is this: AI-native tools are no longer operating in isolation. They're forming ecosystems. Lovable on Supabase isn’t just a clever tech decision—it’s a systems alignment. And that alignment reshapes the economics of internal investment. You start thinking less about handoff and fidelity loss, and more about which tools can actually compose into one another in real time. That’s a very different kind of stack planning. It’s easy to say this is just where the tooling is headed. But to me, it feels more like a return to something I’ve missed. In the Web 2.0 era, people talked about this stuff—openly, publicly, and often imperfectly. We wrote about what it meant for tools to be modular, or for the web to behave like a platform instead of a destination. We imagined lightweight, expressive infrastructure that supported creativity instead of slowing it down. And we made decisions—sometimes naïve, sometimes visionary—based on what felt possible in that moment. This feels like one of those moments. We’re watching the scaffolding of product creation become intelligible across functions. The tools are increasingly fluent with each other. And instead of fighting for fidelity between design and build, we’re moving toward something far more fluid: a product surface that responds to intent, supported by infrastructure that doesn’t need a dedicated team to stand up. Call it Web 2.5 if you want. I’m less interested in the label than the posture. And right now, the posture feels open again—like the best tools are quietly building toward something bigger than themselves.

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Quick UX Observation While browsing Laverne Group | مجموعة لافيرن I added 3 items to my cart. The cart icon shows 3, but when opening the cart it displays “Empty Cart” (see screenshot). Possible reasons: Frontend & backend cart state mismatch Session / cache issue (especially on mobile) Guest vs logged-in cart conflict API or localization reset Small UX bugs like this can quietly impact user trust and conversions. #UX #Ecommerce #CustomerExperience #Product #LavernePerfume

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If you're a designer interested in prototyping using AI, but are unsure how to get started, Adobe Design Prototyping manager CJ Gammon just released a new article on adobe.design that might just help you out. In it, he shares a few excellent tips and tricks on how to successfully prototype using AI tools, based on real experience in how designers at Adobe are using AI-based prototyping today. https://lnkd.in/guytfQwv

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I’m especially excited about this one. Starting today, agents can write directly to Figma files using the use_figma skill, with full awareness of your team’s design system. The infinite canvas has always been Figma’s magic - a space that’s a little messy, super collaborative, and perfect for turning early ideas into something real. Now agents get to show up in that same space, helping explore, iterate, and build. Proud of the team behind this, and excited to see what people craft with it! We'll keep improving it.

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Designing for change early is what keeps momentum high and rework manageable. I’ve been focused on improving both the speed and quality of my team’s applications and SOLID design principles have remained central to that effort. SOLID exists to reduce the cost of change. These principles help teams structure systems that are easier to reason about, test, extend and maintain without breaking things. That value only compounds when change is expected. For a startup still working toward product–market fit, change is constant. Requirements shift, assumptions get challenged and customer feedback forces rapid iteration. In that environment, SOLID is perfect for us. Early-stage products must remain nimble enough to adapt quickly because systems fail when change becomes too expensive. That’s why we think about SOLID as the key to our long term success.

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