Figma’s co‑founder Dylan Field has voiced reservations about the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standard that lets AI agents hook into external data sources and tools. Despite his concerns, the design platform is widening its backing of the open‑source protocol. At the inaugural Config conference in India, Figma announced that 20 new partners would join MCP, naming companies such as Amp, ClickUp, Dia, Junie by JetBrains, Linear, Meta Muse, Mistral, Notion, OpenCode and Sarvam Agents.
Field’s doubts about MCP have been on record before. A few days before the conference, an MCP co‑creator criticized Figma for not supporting the open‑source tool Pi. In response, Field posted on X that Anthropic, the creators of the MCP standard, do not make their own artifacts or cloud resources available through the protocol. He wrote, “I find it interesting that Anthropic (creators of MCP standard) do not expose artifacts/other cloud resources created via MCP. The debate is framed as open versus closed. Everyone always prefers open … obviously. And meanwhile issues of asymmetric context sharing are ignored.” He later added that Figma intends to add support for Pi and asked, “Can you help me understand why you don’t make various Anthropic resources available via MCP? Maybe I’m missing something.”
During a media briefing, Field reiterated his view that MCP is not a finished solution. He said, “I’m really excited about what we’re doing in terms of opening up our ecosystem. I also think that MCP is not a perfect protocol. It has a lot of room for improvement.” He added that the protocol currently benefits frontier labs more, and that he wants developers who need a simple way to access Figma data to be able to use it.
Figma’s chief executive explained that the company is cautious about full openness because exposing more data through MCP could increase the risk of misuse. While most users have no intention of abusing the system, the leadership feels a responsibility to consider potential threats.
The story was reported by Ivan Mehta, who covers global consumer‑tech trends for TechCrunch from India. He has previously written for the Huffington Post and The Next Web. Reach him at the protected email address or via Signal at ivan.42.