Figma paywalled the Dev Mode inspect panel that was previously free, locking out developers who only need to read specs, measurements, and CSS without editing designs

When Figma paywalled Dev Mode in early 2024, it removed the free Inspect Panel that developers had used to read spacing, colors, font specs, and auto-generated CSS. A dev seat now costs $144/year per developer ($25-35/month enterprise). In most engineering orgs, developers outnumber designers 5:1, so the cost multiplies dramatically. The Figma community forum thread on dev mode pricing has accumulated hundreds of replies from developers describing tripled annual bills and switching to Penpot, Zeplin, or Motiff. The specific pain is that developers only need read-only access to completed designs but are charged full dev seat prices. No tool exists that pulls design tokens, spacing, and CSS specs out of a Figma file into a lightweight web UI or CLI without requiring a Figma dev seat.