Design System View: Colors, Spacing, Typography and Components

Goal

See your file's design system in one place and apply a theme to layers without touching your Figma variables.

Before you start

• A file with some variables, styles or components to start from, or a selection to read a theme from.

Steps

1. Open the sheet Click the Design System button (the coloured bubble) in the bottom group of the sidebar. A sheet called Design System opens with the list of systems: Start from this file, New design system…, and the built-in styles.

   

2. Start from your file or create one Start from this file reads the variables and styles of the file. New design system… opens a Create from menu: This file (variables and styles), A DESIGN.md file…, Paste a DESIGN.md, or A website… The sheet works on the theme you pick; saved themes are DESIGN.md documents kept in the plugin.
3. Work through the four tabs Colors shows the token colors and the other colors, with a background ramp and a color picker for each; changes repaint the frame you have selected and do not write Figma variables. Spacing has a Base unit slider and seven steps (xxs to xxl), and 'Base unit moves' chooses whether gaps, padding, corners or borders follow it. Typography sets size and weight for each step. Components lists the components of your file, with a search, and jumps to one on the canvas; it is read-only.

   

4. Apply it to a selection Select a frame and click Apply to selection to repaint it with the theme; the button is disabled, with the tooltip 'Select a frame first, then apply.', until you do. The arrow beside the button offers Save changes to DESIGN.md, and the ↺ button resets your edits.
5. Edit or export DESIGN.md The ⋮ menu of the sheet offers Edit DESIGN.md…, Enhance with AI, Save as new theme…, and under Import & export the download of DESIGN.md. In Chat, the skill Export DESIGN.md writes one from your variables, styles or selection and offers it for download.

   

Tips

• Switch on 'Apply spacing when theme switches' or 'Apply typography when theme switches' to keep a frame in step with the theme.
• Use Chat's Query Design System to ask what the file already defines before you build on it.

Result

You have a theme you can apply, edit and export, and a clear view of the components in your file.

If something goes wrong

• Apply to selection is disabled, or Figma says 'Select a layer first, then apply your design system'.

  Select the layers that should take the theme, then click Apply to selection.

• Generate DESIGN.md says the file has no variables, color styles or text styles.

  Create some tokens, or ask Chat to extract a system from a selection.

• The Components tab says 'No components gathered yet'.

  The tab lists a scanned catalog of your file's components and the library components its instances use. Click Create from this file, or Rescan this file once components exist.

Related guides

• AI ASSISTANT & VISION
  Chat (Alpha): Ask the AI to Edit Layers, Styles and Layouts Chat is the plugin's early agent: describe what you want, or pick one of its skills with a slash, and it changes layers, styles or variables in your file. It is an alpha, so expect changes.
  →
• AI ASSISTANT & VISION
  AI Assistant, Vision Reviews & Layer Renaming Use Contently's AI for multimodal design feedback, layer renaming from image contents, copy brainstorming, and component-aware layout builds.
  →
• SMART TEMPLATES
  Smart Templates: Automatic Layer Matching Smart Templates automatically match template data to the right layers based on layer names, letting you populate entire mockups and nested components in one click.
  →