If you design in Figma and you've watched engineers rebuild your frames by hand for years, Make's codebase mode is the feature you've been waiting for. Since May 2026, Make in your local codebase can open your team's real app, let you change it with a properties panel, annotations or chat, and send the result to engineering as a pull request.
The catch is getting in. It's a closed beta, and plenty of teams on the waitlist are still waiting. Here's what Make does with a codebase, where it stops, and what you can use in the meantime.
What Make does with a codebase
Everything happens on your Mac. You open a local folder or clone a repository, and Make writes config into .figma/make so it knows how to install and run the project. Once the app is up, you select an element and change its layout, colour, type or spacing, stack annotations to queue several edits, or ask in chat. Edits sit as local commits until you create a branch and open a pull request.
GitHub gets the full treatment through a Figma GitHub App your org admin installs, though GitHub Enterprise Server isn't supported. GitLab and Bitbucket connect over SSH, and on those you open the pull request in the provider's own interface.
Why teams look elsewhere
You might not get in. It's Mac only, in the Figma Beta desktop app, on Professional, Organization and Enterprise plans. Access goes out in waves by organisation, and Figma's launch post says joining the waitlist doesn't guarantee a place. It's free for now. Seat requirements and credit pricing haven't been announced.
Your laptop becomes the dev environment. The repo is cloned onto the designer's machine, so they need access to it and Make has to be able to run it there. Figma's troubleshooting guide says a repository may need a one-time setup from an engineer, and names SSH setup for GitLab and Bitbucket as the most common first blocker for designers.
It's for frontends. Make handles any web framework, with React, Vue and Svelte verified. Figma says the beta isn't meant for backend work, infrastructure, native mobile or non-web code.
The config lives in git. Figma recommends committing .figma/make to main so every branch picks it up.
If the prototype came from Anthropic's canvas instead, Claude Design alternatives sorts that tool's options by what you need next.
Refinar
Best for: a designer or PM who doesn't code, changing an app on GitHub with nothing set up locally.
Nothing runs on your laptop. You connect a repository through Refinar's GitHub App (connect your app to GitHub), and Refinar boots the app in a cloud sandbox, backend included. A designer opens a browser tab, clicks the element on the live app they want changed or describes it, and watches an AI agent make the edit, then shares it for review when it's ready.
Changes arrive as a draft pull request on their own branch, and no config files land in your repo. Frontends on Next, Vite, Astro, Nuxt or Angular work, as do server-rendered apps on Laravel, Django, Rails, Go or Rust.
You won't get Make's properties panel. There are no sliders or fields to adjust, only the request and the preview. It's also GitHub only. What you get in return are guard rails for a product people are using. Writes to connected services such as the payment provider are flagged for someone's approval, and any edit can be rolled back until it's published. Work touching sign-in or customer data is held back for a developer, your own or, if you have none, a Refinar developer, who gets it within 4 hours on any business day. It costs from $50 a month, and every plan covers 20 teammates (pricing).
Builder.io Fusion
Best for: designers who need a canvas today, on React, Vue, Svelte or Angular.
Of everything here, Fusion feels most like Make. It's a visual editor on your running app, but it's generally available, it runs in Builder's cloud rather than on your Mac, and it takes GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps as well as GitHub. Pricing is per seat ($24 per user a month on Pro, $40 on Team) plus agent credits, and it adds a .builderrules file to the repo. Builder.io Fusion alternatives covers the trade-offs.
JetBrains Matter
Best for: a frontend team comfortable on another early access list.
Matter works on a mirror of your repository in JetBrains' cloud. PMs and designers prompt changes, reference Figma frames and hand off a GitHub pull request. It's free, its preview needs a frontend dev server, and the whole thing sits under early access terms JetBrains can end whenever it chooses. More in JetBrains Matter alternatives.
Onlook
Best for: an open-source canvas on a React app.
Closest to Make in spirit: click an element, change it, and the code changes underneath. Onlook is Apache 2.0, runs locally or hosted, and works best on Next.js with Tailwind. Its hosted version has a waitlist of its own, and the site doesn't describe how changes become a pull request.
v0
Best for: a Next.js app on Vercel.
v0 can take an existing repository and open a pull request against the branch you pick. It expects a Vercel project, and previews see Development variables only, so it suits teams already deploying there (the details).
Which one should you pick?
- Not in the beta, or not on a Mac: Refinar if you'd rather set nothing up locally, Builder.io Fusion if you want a canvas.
- The app has a backend you'll need to touch: Refinar.
- Free and early access is fine: JetBrains Matter.
- Open source matters: Onlook.
- Next.js on Vercel: v0.
- You're in, you're on a Mac, and the frontend lives on GitHub: stay on Make. Nothing else here puts your design file and your code in one window.
Once designers are opening pull requests, the team needs rules for who approves what, and changing a live app without breaking it is a sensible place to begin.
If the waitlist is where you're stuck, connect a repo to Refinar and ask for the change you'd have made in Make.