Figma's Handoff Status: A Traffic Light for Devs

WHY IT EXISTS: To solve the messy communication problem in design handoff. Without a formal system, developers don't know if a design is final, a work-in-progress, or has been secretly updated after they started building. This leads to building the wrong thing or constant "is this ready?" check-ins.

THE MENTAL MODEL: Treat Figma's handoff statuses like a contract between design and engineering. The Ready for dev status is the designer's signature, saying "This part is approved for implementation." The automatic Changed status is an amendment alert, telling the developer the contract has been altered and needs re-verification before work continues.

HOW IT WORKS: On paid plans, designers can select a section, frame, or component and mark it Ready for dev. This notifies developers who have viewed the file. If a designer then modifies that element, Figma automatically applies a Changed state, which cannot be set manually. The designer must then re-confirm the status to clear the Changed flag. Developers seeing a Changed element can use Figma's version comparison tool to see the differences. A Completed status is also available on Organization and Enterprise plans.

WHEN TO USE IT: Use statuses in any project with a formal handoff process, especially for asynchronous teams. It provides a clear, persistent signal of design readiness without requiring a meeting. It's also ideal for large projects, allowing designers to release components for development incrementally as they are finalized.

WHEN NOT TO USE IT: Do not rely on it as the sole form of communication, as the system has blind spots. The Changed status is not triggered by several common and critical updates. These include updates to a component instance from a shared library, changes in the value of an already-attached variable, or changes in an attached style. In these cases, developers will not be notified of a change, making direct communication essential to avoid building with outdated specs.

ONE CANONICAL EXAMPLE: A designer finishes a user profile card and marks its section Ready for dev. The developer gets a notification and starts building. The next day, a product manager requests a small text change. The designer makes the edit. Figma automatically flags the section with a Changed status. The developer sees this, compares versions to see the diff, and updates their implementation. The designer then updates the status back to Ready for dev.