Designers have been undervalued for a decade not because of the work

Designers have been undervalued for a decade. Not because of the work. Because of the process.

The handoff was always the problem. Specs go to engineers. Translation happens. Things get lost. By the time something ships, the design intent is diluted.

Claude Code and Figma MCP just eliminated that gap. Designers can now build and deploy directly. No mediation. No waiting. No spec documents that get ignored.

The argument that designers are underrated used to be aspirational. Now it has infrastructure.

Design taste and judgment are the things AI can't replicate. Every other part of the stack is becoming executable.

Does that make the designer more valuable, or easier to replace?