Fix Figma Weave Ignoring System Prompt Instructions

If Figma Weave has suddenly stopped following your system prompts, ignoring specific design system variables, or violating your custom layout constraints, you are dealing with a model adherence regression. This typically happens when the model's active memory (context window) becomes overloaded, when formatting errors break the system prompt parser, or when local browser state corrupts active configurations.

Use these step-by-step methods to restore correct model behavior and force Figma Weave to respect your design and coding constraints.

1. Clean up and reformat system prompt syntax Figma Weave relies on structured formatting to weigh system instructions above user prompts. If your system prompt contains syntax errors, Weave will silently fail back to its default baseline weights, ignoring your custom rules.

1. Locate your system prompt configuration file or settings panel.
2. Look for open-ended brackets, unclosed quotation marks, or corrupted markdown syntax within your instructions.
3. Simplify your instructions. Instead of long-form paragraphs, use structured bullet points or raw JSON objects to define constraints (e.g., "design_system": "tokens-v2" or "spacing_unit": "8px").
4. Remove conflicting instructions. If you tell Weave to "always use auto-layout" in one line but "keep positioning absolute where needed" in another, the model may default to ignoring both.

2. Prune your Figma canvas context Because Figma Weave reads design elements, layers, and tokens from your active Figma workspace, huge files can easily flood the model's context window. When the token limit is exceeded, system instructions are the first things compressed or forgotten to make room for newer inputs.

1. Select only the specific frames or layers you are actively generating or refactoring, rather than letting Weave read the entire page.
2. Temporarily hide or delete unused master components, hidden draft layers, and asset libraries from your workspace.
3. If you are feeding custom design systems as reference data, compress your style definitions to include only the relevant tokens (colors, typography, spacing) for the immediate task.

3. Flush the session context and start fresh Over long generation sessions, Figma Weave’s attention algorithm shifts focus toward the most recent exchanges in the chat thread. This causes older, global system rules to lose priority. Clearing this cached session memory resets the weights.

1. Save your work and close the active Figma Weave panel or generation window.
2. In Figma's menu, go to File > New Design File to create a clean testing canvas.
3. Open Figma Weave in the new canvas and re-paste your system instructions.
4. If using Figma in a web browser, perform a hard reload of the page (Ctrl + F5 on Windows or Cmd + Shift + R on macOS) to clear cached AI session variables.

4. Reset the Figma Desktop App cache If you are using the Figma Desktop App, corrupted app data can prevent new system prompts from registering properly. The app may be sending cached, outdated instructions to the Weave backend API.

On macOS: 1. Quit the Figma Desktop App. 2. Open **Finder** and press `Cmd + Shift + G`. 3. Enter `~/Library/Application Support/Figma/` and press Go. 4. Delete the `Cache`, `CachedData`, and `GPUCache` folders. 5. Restart the app and reload your Weave workspace.

On Windows: 1. Close the Figma Desktop App. 2. Press `Win + R` to open the Run dialog box. 3. Type `%APPDATA%\Figma` and hit Enter. 4. Delete the `Cache` and `GPUCache` folders inside this directory. 5. Relaunch Figma and verify if your system instructions are now followed.

5. Explicitly declare variables in the prompt field If the system prompt layer is consistently failing to apply, you can bypass the default parser hierarchy by using structured "override directives" directly inside your user-facing prompt box.

* Structure your message with clear tags: ` [SYSTEM OVERRIDE] Strict rule: Use auto-layout for all frames. Strict rule: Do not generate placeholder lorem ipsum text. [END SYSTEM OVERRIDE] User request: Generate a custom navigation bar... ` * This forces the token processing engine to prioritize these parameters during the initial execution pass.

When to escalate If Figma Weave continues to ignore clear, simple instructions across completely empty design files, there may be a platform-wide model regression or API routing issue. Check the Figma status page for active incidents relating to AI features or Weave. If the service status is green, file a bug report via the Figma Help Center, ensuring you include a copy of the system prompt and the exact output that deviated from your rules.