Top Tools and Plugins to Leverage AI in Your Design System

AI is reshaping work across all industries, driving automation, enhancing creativity, and ensuring consistency. In design, AI has transformed workflows by helping teams automate tasks, generate new ideas, and maintain high standards. Tools like ChatGPT can quickly create documentation or suggest new design patterns, freeing up time for creative work. In this article, we'll explore the top tools that can help you leverage AI in your design system workflows, boosting productivity and creativity.

We'll explore two categories of AI tools that design teams can utilize: Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude for broad design system support, and dedicated AI tools and plugins, like Figma AI, which integrate directly into design workflows.

Leveraging LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude for Design Systems

LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude are versatile tools that can support the most impactful aspects of a design system, such as documentation, naming conventions, and code generation. These tools are particularly effective because they automate tedious tasks and enable rapid ideation, allowing design teams to focus on creative problem-solving. By integrating LLMs into your workflow, you can automate repetitive tasks, generate fresh ideas, and maintain consistency across your design system.

Key uses for LLMs in Design Systems

• Design system documentation: Automate the creation of standardized descriptions for design components and tokens – saving time and ensuring consistency.
• Naming conventions: Generate scalable naming conventions for components to create a cohesive taxonomy and reduce confusion.
• Guideline creation: Draft best practices and accessibility standards quickly, keeping your documentation up to date with evolving standards.
• Information access: Rather than add to your design system, an LLM can absorb it and help the user get instant access to the exact information they need through prompts.
• Design system ideation: Brainstorm new design patterns or components with LLMs, using them as a creative partner for fresh inspiration.
• Feedback simulation: Simulate user feedback to anticipate potential usability issues early in the design process.
• Code generation and review: Generate code snippets or review existing code to align with accessibility standards and design guidelines.
• Research and trends: Quickly surface the latest trends in design systems or gather insights on popular practices.
• Claude’s computer use capability: Once reliable, this feature could assist in UI/UX testing by automating interactions and identifying potential issues. It could also be used for conducting comprehensive user journey simulations, enabling more dynamic and efficient testing processes.

Pricing: 

• ChatGPT: Limited free plan, $20/month Plus plan, and an API pricing model.
• Claude: Limited free plan, $20/month Plus plan, and an API and enterprise pricing model.

Dedicated AI Tools to Enhance Design System Workflows

Apart from LLMs, several dedicated tools integrate directly with popular design platforms to enhance productivity. Let's take a closer look at some of the top AI-powered tools for design systems. These tools are designed to address specific challenges in the design process, offering targeted features that can significantly improve efficiency and quality.

1. Figma AI 

Figma AI consists of a suite of AI-powered features that help designers accelerate their workflows, minimize repetitive tasks, and focus more on creative problem-solving. Figma AI offers capabilities like visual search, automatic layer naming, and generative content to streamline the design process.

• Visual search: Upload an image to find similar designs within your workspace. This feature is particularly useful when trying to maintain visual consistency across different projects.
• Automatic layer naming: Rename and organize layers contextually for easier navigation. This helps keep files organized and makes it easier for team members to understand and work with each other's designs.
• Generative content: Replace placeholder text with AI-generated text tailored to your needs. This reduces the reliance on generic placeholders like Lorem Ipsum, allowing you to create more realistic prototypes.
• Background removal: Instantly remove backgrounds from images. This feature saves time and allows designers to quickly isolate subjects without relying on external tools.
• Rewrite and translate text: Adjust text tone, length, or language to iterate quickly. This makes it easy to experiment with different messaging options to find the best fit.
• FigJam AI: Automate diagram creation and feedback sorting to make brainstorming sessions actionable. FigJam AI helps turn ideas into actionable plans, making collaboration more efficient.

Why it's useful: These features streamline the design process, reduce friction, and help teams move from ideation to prototyping more effectively. By using Figma AI, teams can save time on repetitive tasks and focus on creating innovative designs that align with their goals.

Pricing: Currently free for Figma users while in beta.

2. GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered code completion tool developed by GitHub in collaboration with OpenAI. It assists developers by suggesting entire lines or blocks of code as they type, enhancing productivity and code quality.

Key Features:

• Code Completion and Suggestions: Copilot generates code snippets based on comments or partial code inputs, facilitating rapid development and reducing time spent on routine coding tasks.
• Testing and Debugging Assistance: Copilot can suggest test cases and assist in writing tests for existing code, helping ensure that components function as intended.
• Design-to-Code Integration: While Copilot excels in code generation, it doesn't directly integrate with design tools like Figma. However, developers can use Copilot to implement design specifications into code, ensuring adherence to design guidelines and standards.

Why it’s useful: GitHub Copilot bridges the gap between design and development, reducing friction in handoffs and ensuring that design components are implemented accurately. By using AI-powered code suggestions, design system teams can maintain code consistency and adhere to best practices, all while saving time on repetitive coding tasks.

Pricing:

• Individual Users: $10 per month or $100 per year.
• Business Plans: $19 per user per month.

3. Magician

Magician is a Figma plugin that helps designers with ideation and rapid prototyping. It provides tools like icon and illustration generation, making the design process faster and more creative.

• Icon and illustration generation: Generate icons and illustrations instantly to support design creativity.
• Text content generation: Create text content to reduce the reliance on placeholders and speed up the initial design phase.

Why it's useful: Magician encourages creativity by providing instant visual assets, helping designers experiment with different ideas without having to create everything from scratch. This tool is especially useful when working on tight deadlines, as it speeds up the initial design phase.

Pricing: Free within Figma while in beta.

4. Anima Frontier

Anima Frontier is a Figma plugin that streamlines the process of converting Figma designs into React code, leveraging advanced AI capabilities and the new Code Injection feature. This tool integrates smoothly into existing development workflows, making it easier to maintain consistency and efficiency.

• Efficient design-to-code conversion: Convert Figma designs into React code with minimal manual effort, accelerating the development process.
• Component reuse and integration: Automatically identifies and integrates existing components into new projects, ensuring architectural consistency.
• Coding style adherence: Adheres to your coding style, including naming conventions and styling, for seamless code integration.

Why it’s useful: Anima Frontier enhances development by enabling rapid design-to-code transformation. It reduces manual coding and integrates AI-driven features like component matching and code generation, allowing teams to focus on innovation while maintaining consistency and quality across the design system.

Pricing: Available with different plans based on usage and features starting at 24$/seat/month.

5. Stark

Stark is an accessibility checker plugin that helps ensure your designs meet compliance standards by checking color contrast and readability, making it easier to create accessible designs.

• AI-powered automated accessibility suggestions: Continuous automated scanning of design files and code repositories, paired with AI-driven recommendations, speeds up the detection and resolution of accessibility issues faster than ever before.
• Color contrast checks: Automatically check color contrast to ensure designs are readable.
• Readability checks: Validate text readability to meet accessibility standards.

Why it's useful: Accessibility is a crucial aspect of any design system, and Stark helps designers identify potential issues early in the process. By using Stark, teams can ensure that their designs are inclusive and meet the needs of all users, regardless of ability.

Pricing: Free limited plan and a variety of paid plans starting at $21/month. 

6. Frontitude

Frontitude helps maintain copy consistency across your design system by aligning UI text with brand guidelines and ensuring localization support.

• AI-powered copy checks: Align UI text with brand guidelines to enhance coherence across components.
• Localization support: Ensure consistency in copy variations for different regions.

Why it's useful: Consistent copy is vital for creating a unified user experience, and Frontitude makes it easier to ensure that all text elements are on-brand and contextually appropriate.

Pricing: Limited free plan and paid plans starting $69/month. 

7. Uizard

Uizard generates prototypes, wireframes, and components based on descriptions or sketches, speeding up design workflows and reducing manual effort.

• Component generation: Automatically generate UI components based on descriptions or sketches to speed up design workflows.
• Sketch to wireframe generation: Generate ready to use wireframes from uploaded sketches.
• Prototype generation: Build quick editable multi-screen prototypes from text descriptions.

Why it's useful: By transforming ideas into fully functional components and screens, Uizard reduces the manual effort involved in building new elements. This tool is particularly useful for teams that need to quickly iterate on designs or create variations of existing components.

Pricing: Limited free plan and paid plans starting at $12/month.

AI is transforming how design system teams operate, enabling them to work smarter, faster, and more creatively. Whether it’s leveraging LLMs for documentation and ideation or using dedicated plugins to automate tedious tasks, AI adoption can make a huge difference in both efficiency and consistency. 

As AI continues to evolve, now is the perfect time for teams to experiment with and integrate these tools to stay ahead of the curve. The tools and plugins discussed in this article are just the beginning —  what this list might look like in 6 months can look dramatically different. So stay tuned to Supernova’s blog and socials for the latest on design systems.