I designed and built an AI pipeline from Figma to interactive Unity UI. After two live projects I split it, so designers own UI in code and engineering owns business logic.
Shipping the screens on a stack we already planned to leave.
I was looking at a roadmap tension a lot of product teams will recognize. New screens had to ship on a UI framework everyone already knew was transitional.
I saw two layers of throwaway risk.
Any hand-built screen would be rebuilt when the framework switched.
Any custom infrastructure on top of it would go with it.
The Evolution of the Pipeline.
STAGE 1 · PROVE IT ON ONE COMPONENT
I started with one component: pull values from Figma, check tokens, generate styles and behavior, drop the result in a showcase, compare to source. It worked. It was still one agent and one person driving every step. That was me.
STAGE 2 · SCALE TO A SCREEN
I scaled that idea to a 13-step orchestrator. It reads a Figma URL, matches the design system, pauses for a human on every gap, and binds the screen to a ViewModel that never touches Unity.
STAGE 3 · SPLIT DESIGN AND DEV
After two live projects I found one thread doing two jobs. Designers could match Figma. They could not steer the ViewModel half. Thirteen steps were too long to review. I split the live system into a Design Orchestrator, a handoff agent, and a Dev Orchestrator so both sides can work in parallel.
Shared Rules Underneath.
I made phase 1 read-only: describe, then match. A human signs the gap list. Phase 2 builds only what was approved. Phase 3, owned by engineering, plans the ViewModel and wires editable data.
I stop the run if a canon file would change. The orchestration spine is never written by the AI. Existing design-system files are never modified. Business logic stays in ViewModels so views can be regenerated when the UI framework changes.
Changing roles and responsibilities
Designer's Responsibility: Figma is the input, not a spec to re-interpret. Designers approve every gap and own the UI in code.
Engineering owns the business logic.
3
projects shipped in the last 4 months
71%
under budget