Direct answer
Keep Figma for collaboration and shadcn for component source. Add Better Design as the agent guidance and review layer, starting with one flow.
Give each tool one job
Exploration, critique, prototypes, and shared visual intent
Design decisions and review context
Editable React components and registry distribution
Component source owned by the project
Design-system context, agent guidance, principles, and review rules
Implementation guidance for the agent
Production tokens, components, behavior, tests, and history
The shipped source of truth
Adopt it in four steps
- Choose one contained flow such as onboarding, settings, or a form.
- Preserve the current components and extract the semantic tokens already used in production.
- Give the coding agent those constraints, then implement the flow with the existing shadcn-compatible source.
- Review the rendered states and promote only repeated decisions back into the shared system.
A progressive adoption path
Keep visual intent in Figma, translate it into semantic constraints, implement with owned shadcn source, and review the rendered result.
- Figma direction: Use design files for exploration, critique, and shared intent.
- Semantic tokens: Express the approved direction as durable implementation constraints.
- shadcn source: Compose editable components already owned by the project.
- Rendered review: Inspect the real flow before expanding the workflow.
What should stay unchanged
- Existing business logic, routes, data contracts, and analytics.
- Components that already express the intended behavior and visual language.
- Figma files the team uses for exploration, critique, and stakeholder review.
- The team's release, code review, accessibility, and visual QA gates.
When not to add another layer
If the team already has documented tokens, complete components, agent-readable usage rules, and a dependable rendered-review process, keep that system. Better Design is useful when one of those pieces is missing, not because every React project needs another tool.
Progressive adoption should reduce uncertainty in a real flow before it expands. If it creates parallel tokens or duplicate components, stop and reconcile the source of truth first.
Questions
Must a team migrate away from Figma?
No. Keep Figma where it helps people explore and communicate. The important change is giving the coding agent a versioned implementation contract in tokens, components, and interaction rules.
What happens to existing shadcn components?
Keep them. Better Design works with the shadcn-compatible source the project already owns, adding or adapting components only when the product requires it.
What is the safest first Better Design project?
Choose one reversible, bounded flow with visible quality problems and clear acceptance criteria. Avoid a full-product migration as the first test.