Five product lines, one question: what should a design tool be in the age of AI?
Config 2026 Keynote with Dylan Field (CEO & Co-founder, Figma) · Dave
64 min total·Actually worth watching closely: ~25 min·3 must-watch clips
- 1:57 – 8:59Listen
Opening: AI lowered the floor, but hasn't raised the ceiling yet
Opening from a film about a future that doesn't just happen but is built by design, Dylan Field looks back at his own call from a few years ago: AI making it possible for anyone to build has happened; pushing the ceiling of the work higher hasn't yet, and that part is on creators themselves.
The industry's question has moved from "can it be made" to "what would you make if you could make anything".
This stretch is a person on stage making an argument; the screen is the speaker and a few title cards, so listening is enough.▶ Jump to 1:57Speaker · Dylan Field - 9:03 – 13:09Skim
"Design versus code" is a false debate
Code gets redefined as a design material, as shapeable as texture or color, rather than the opposite of design — tools have forced a choice for too long and Figma shouldn't anymore either. And AI coding today is lonely: each of us is hundreds of prompts deep with our own agent, working in a silo.
Code is replaying the path design already took: from being done in isolation to being done side by side.
The visuals are a few comparison diagrams; a glance at the pairing is enough — the substance is in what's said.▶ Jump to 9:03 - 13:09 – 21:59Watch
Code Layers: code lives on the canvas
The most concrete demo of the talk. Code becomes a layer on the canvas: take an existing design layer and click "Build this with code" to convert it, or use the new code tool in the toolbar to create one and start prompting. Multiple code layers run at once and can be dragged and interacted with, Option-drag branches one, GitHub repositories and local folders import onto the canvas with two-way sync, and the agent chat is shared with the whole team. Then several people each build their own variant of the same interface and pick from one another's.
It moves AI coding out of a private one-on-one chat and back onto a canvas everyone can see, pick up, and fork. Closed beta from July for full seats on paid plans.
The screen never stops moving — several prototypes running at once, clicking in to switch between weathers, a recorded pass through a flow unfolding into a bird's-eye map of states. None of it survives description.▶ Jump to 13:09 - 22:12 – 26:51Watch
Weave: node-based creative workflows move onto the canvas
Dave walks through Weave's node canvas — nodes either hold information like images, video, and 3D models, or perform an action through AI models and through more manual controls like color grading and timelines. Three workflows run live: a 360 product video, a fast rendering engine, and unifying the style of product photos coming from different vendors. Those workflows are coming to the Figma canvas as ready-made tools.
The value of a workflow is that you build it once and run it across everything — change one style reference and the whole set changes style; wrapped as a tool, you don't have to worry about the noodles anymore.
How the nodes are wired and how a result flows down through them is the only way this becomes understandable; the word "workflow" on its own conjures nothing.▶ Jump to 22:12Speaker · Dave - 26:52 – 38:12Skim
Generative plugins: the cost of making a tool drops to nearly zero
The most popular Weave workflows come packaged as single-purpose tools — sticker pack, replace background, texturize, add logo to product, mockup generation. Going further, a few sentences get the agent to build a plugin on the spot, like "a plugin to randomize the height of all frame content so it looks like a real audio waveform" — no code to write, no publishing flow. The plugin sits in the file's properties and travels with the file, even with the project.
When making a tool costs one sentence, you stop asking whether something is worth building a tool for. Shipping today.
What matters is the few sentences describing the ask and the result that comes back; the middle is waiting for generation — fast-forward to the payoff.▶ Jump to 26:52 - 38:17 – 49:01Skim
Shaders: a material from one sentence and a reference image
Shaders open up. With natural language and a reference image dropped into the agent, you get two things: fills, which are the material of a shape, and effects that bend real layers. Once generated, you drag the handles right on the canvas to adjust, and stack and reorder multiple effects.
Complex visual effects no longer require a detour through specialist software, and what comes back stays hand-adjustable rather than one-shot. Available today to full seats on paid plans.
The effects look great, but the rhythm is a repeating loop of describe, generate, tweak — two or three examples showing how the handles work is plenty.▶ Jump to 38:17 - 49:13 – 60:53Watch
Figma Motion: the canvas finally has a timeline
Motion comes to Figma. Shift+K activates auto key, easing curves are adjusted right on the canvas even as the object plays, one sentence gets the agent to generate animation in bulk and the result stays editable, and there's support for custom plugins and 3D transform previews. It closes with several people working the same timeline live and shader effects layered over the motion.
Motion stops being a coat of polish added before handoff and becomes a design object several people can edit at once, like any interface.
All of it is in motion — how keyframes land automatically, how the animation changes as an easing curve is dragged, two cursors on the same timeline. You have to watch it.▶ Jump to 49:13 - 60:59 – 63:42Listen
Shipping it: from motion into production
The close is about how motion reaches real production: switch to Dev mode and extract the code directly, send it via the Figma MCP to your LLM, or use Figma Make — or export as MP4, WebM, animated SVG, or GIF. Rolling out today in beta on all plans and full seats.
The whole launch lands on "this can ship", not on effects that stay pretty inside a demo.
These minutes are mostly a recital of delivery paths and availability over a release info card; catching the version and the seat scope is enough.▶ Jump to 60:59