Figma plugin
See what changed and publish, from any Figma plan.
The Basemode plugin publishes a Figma file's variables and styles to Basemode. It works on every Figma plan, including Starter and Professional, because it reads the file from inside Figma rather than through the REST API that only Enterprise unlocks for variables.
Install
Open Basemode on Figma Community, choose Open in… and pick the file that holds your variables. After that, run it from your plugins, or search for "Basemode" in Actions (⌘ / on Mac, Ctrl / on Windows).
Publish
- In Basemode, open your design system. Under Bring in your tokens, copy the design system key. It starts with
bm_. - Paste the key into the plugin. Figma remembers it on this computer.
- Press Check what changed. The plugin compares the file with your last publish and lists every token that was renamed, updated, added or removed, with a swatch for colors. Nothing is sent yet.
- Press Publish. The tokens appear in Basemode within a few seconds, and on plans with pull requests, one opens. Renamed tokens are fixed in code in the same pull request.
Without an account
Download JSON for the CLI saves the same data to a file. Run basemode generate --input on it to get code without using the hosted product. See the CLI.
One file per design system
Each publish from the plugin replaces what the design system held before, so keep a design system's variables and styles in one Figma file, or make a design system per file.
On Figma Enterprise, a design system can instead read several files through Figma's API, such as a primitives library and a product theme. Add each file in Settings; Basemode merges them, and aliases between files resolve.