Pencil

Pencil is a design canvas tool that integrates with IDEs and coding agents such as Cursor and Claude Code. Unlike Figma, which currently only offers read access, Pencil runs a bidirectional local MCP server that gives both read and write access to directly manipulate the canvas. It also provides design-to-code capabilities similarly to tools such as Figma Make and Builder.io, but takes a more developer-centric approach, with design files stored in the repository in an open JSON format called .pen, making design assets versionable alongside code. This approach can help close the design-to-development hand-off gap by integrating with tools familiar to developers. For large-scale and complex design systems, Figma remains the standard for collaboration across roles. However, Pencil is worth considering for teams without dedicated designers or for teams with developers who have strong design skills.