Figma has quietly established a gatekeeping regime for its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — the interface that lets AI-powered tools interact with Figma's design platform. A Figma employee named Gayani confirmed on X that the company's remote MCP server only accepts clients from a curated approved list, and that unapproved tools like Pi are locked out until Figma decides otherwise. The mechanism is straightforward: Figma publishes an MCP catalog at figma.com/mcp-catalog listing which AI clients are permitted to connect. If your tool isn't on the list, you fill out a Google Form and wait. There is no public criteria for approval, no timeline commitment, and no appeal process visible from the outside. This is a textbook platform chokepoint move. MCP was designed as an open protocol to let AI agents interact with software tools — a kind of universal adapter for the AI-agent era. By restricting which clients can use its MCP endpoint, Figma is converting an open protocol into a permissioned marketplace where it decides who gets access to the design data its users already created. The business logic is defensible on its face: security, rate limiting, quality control. Figma doesn't want random bots hammering its API. But the structural effect is that Figma becomes the gatekeeper for an entire category of AI tooling that touches design workflows. Every AI startup building on MCP now needs Figma's explicit permission to integrate, giving Figma veto power over its own competitive ecosystem. The comparison to app stores is instructive. Apple didn't start as a gatekeeper — it became one by controlling the distribution layer. Figma is doing the same thing at the protocol layer: taking an open standard and adding a permission layer that happens to align perfectly with incumbent advantage. For users, this means the AI tools available to them inside Figma are the ones Figma approves, not the ones the market produces. For AI tool developers, this means a new dependency on Figma's willingness to list them — a dependency that didn't exist when MCP was conceived as open infrastructure. The question isn't whether Figma has the right to do this — it clearly does. The question is whether the design ecosystem is better served by a permissioned or permissionless integration layer, and who bears the cost of the answer Figma has chosen.
