Publish & Share

You’ve built styles, components, and clean names. Now make them real to the outside world. Figmage reads your file through Figma’s API, and that API only sees what you’ve published as a library. This page covers the two parts of going live: publishing, and sharing the details developers need to connect.

Publishing your library

Think of publishing as pressing “save” on the version of your design system that everyone else — and Figmage — gets to see. Change a color but don’t re-publish? Figmage will still read the old one. Publishing is the step that makes your work official.

What gets published

When you publish a file as a library, you make all of this available to Figmage:

• Color, text, and effect styles → color, typography, and shadow tokens.
• Variables (on supported plans) → reusable values.
• Components and component sets → measured scales (spacing, radii) and exported icons/images.

Note

You’ll need a paid plan. Libraries are only available on Figma’s paid plans. On the free Starter plan you can still create styles, components, and variables — you just can’t publish them as a library for Figmage to read. The file also has to live in a project, not your drafts, and the library inherits its name from the source file, so give the file a clear name like “Habitz design system”.

How to publish

1. Open the file that contains your design system.
2. Open the Assets tab (the book icon) in the left sidebar.
3. Click the Libraries icon (the tooltip may read Review unpublished changes).
4. Find your current file under This file and click Publish.
5. Add a short description, review the list of added/modified/removed assets, and uncheck anything you don’t want to share.
6. Click Publish.

Tip

To keep a work-in-progress style or component out of the library for good, right-click it in the publish dialog and choose Hide when publishing. If the Publish button is greyed out, it usually means there are no publishable changes since last time, or the file has no styles, components, or variables yet.

For the full walkthrough and plan-specific options, see Figma’s official guide: Publish a library.

Re-publish after every change

Publishing isn’t one-and-done. Each time you add, rename, or update something that should reach developers:

1. Make your change.
2. Re-open the publish dialog.
3. Review the diff and Publish again.
4. Let your developers know they can run a fresh sync.

A simple rhythm to settle into: design → name cleanly → publish → developers sync → product updates.

Sharing access with developers

To connect Figmage to your file, a developer needs two things. As the designer you can provide them — or at least point the way.

The access token

An access token is like a key that lets Figmage read Figma files. It can come from any account with access to the file — often a developer makes their own, but a shared team account works too.

If you’re generating it:

1. Open Settings from your Figma avatar menu.
2. Go to the Security tab.
3. Under Personal access tokens, click Generate new token, name it, and give it read-only file access.
4. Copy the token — Figma shows it only once.

Caution

The token is a secret, like a password. Share it only through a secure channel your team trusts — a password manager or your CI secret store — never in chat, comments, or design files. A personal access token can reach all of your Figma files and can’t be scoped to a single one, so treat it carefully and revoke it from the same Security tab if it’s ever no longer needed.

For step-by-step help generating, managing, or revoking tokens, see Figma’s guide: Manage personal access tokens.

The file ID

The file ID identifies which file Figmage should read. Find it in the file’s URL:

https://www.figma.com/design/<fileId>/Your-Design-System

The long string right after /design/ (or /file/) is the file ID. Copy that part and share it.

What to hand off

Give your developers:

1. How they’ll get the token (or that they should generate their own).
2. The file ID of the library.
3. Which token groups you expect them to sync — colors, typography, icons, spacing, and so on.
4. The source frames or component sets for component-based tokens, such as Spacing, Radii, Icons, or Assets.
5. Publish status — confirm the latest approved changes have been published.
6. Rename notes — list any style, component, frame, or group names that changed since the last sync.

Handoff item	Example
File ID	abc123def456
Published status	”Published after the icon cleanup on June 17.”
Token groups	colors, typography, spacing, icons
Source frames	Spacing, Radii, Icons, Icons Multicolor
Planned renames	Light/Card becomes Light/Surface Raised

One last pass before you hand off? Run the Handoff & Limitations checklist.