SMF·FIGMA
Can a prompt replace Figma?
Design — collaborative interface design
Exhibit tracking slip
Verdict
A single-player vector canvas — shapes, text, layers, local-only persistence — is a real weekend build, and several genuinely good open-source alternatives already exist. What can't be one-shotted is Figma's actual moat: real-time multiplayer editing on a high-performance canvas, plus the fact that an entire team already works inside the same file.
Exhibit A — The prompt
Received on30.07.2026If what you actually need is single-player vector editing, don't build this — run Penpot (open source, self-hostable) or Excalidraw instead; either is a better, more finished tool than a personal clone will be on day one.
If you still want the weekend version: a canvas editor with rectangles, ellipses, text, and frames; selection, move, and resize handles; a right-hand panel for fill, stroke, and corner radius; a layers list with drag-to-reorder. Persist documents entirely in the browser (IndexedDB is enough) with JSON import/export so a file can move between machines. Export a selection as SVG and PNG. Keep it a single page, vanilla JS or a lightweight framework, with no backend and no accounts at all — this is a local tool, not a hosted product.
Do not attempt real-time multiplayer, comments, reusable components, or a plugin system. Multiplayer specifically needs conflict-free replicated data types and a sync server — that's a genuinely hard distributed-systems problem, not a missing feature.Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.
Exhibit B — What you lose
- B.1 real-time multiplayer editing
- B.2 the rest of your team, who are already on Figma
- B.3 the plugin ecosystem
- B.4 years of canvas-performance engineering
Prior art
Exhibit C — Why people still pay: collaboration/ecosystem/performance
Entire product and design teams coordinate inside the same file — people pay because everyone is already there, not because drawing rectangles is hard.
Questions
Can I import my existing Figma files?
Not directly — Figma's file format isn't public, and there's no supported export to an editable format this build can read. You'd rebuild a design's shapes by hand, or start fresh.
Will it work on my phone?
Not well. Precise shape editing needs a mouse or a stylus, and a touchscreen makes this kind of canvas work genuinely harder — this build has no phone-adapted interface.
What does it cost to run?
Nothing — it's a static, single-page app with browser-local storage, no server and no database required.
What's the one thing that doesn't survive the rebuild?
Everyone else being in the file with you. Real-time multiplayer editing is the actual product; a single-player local tool can't put your team in the same canvas, no matter how good the drawing tools get.
Related tools
Receipt