Arrow Generator – From personal tool to 1,600 designers

It started as a lazy solution

Every few weeks I needed an arrow or a checkmark in Figma. Not a big deal — except it was always a small annoying ritual: open an icon library, search, find something close enough, resize it, fix the stroke. Five minutes gone. Every time.

So I built a plugin. For myself. In a weekend.

Arrow Generator lets you create arrows, checkmarks, plus signs, and close icons directly in Figma with parametric controls — tweak the angle, length, roundness, and stroke weight in real time and get a clean, editable vector on your canvas. No library hunting.

1,600 designers showed up

I published it on the Figma community mostly to have a clean place to share it with colleagues. Then people started installing it. Then more people. Then I checked the stats one day and there were 1,600 users.

I hadn't marketed it at all. No posts, no product hunts, no DMs. It just spread.

That was the moment I realized: the best tools solve a problem so specific, so universal, that the people who have that exact problem will find it on their own. Arrow placement is one of those problems. Every designer has been there.

The update

After the user growth I felt the responsibility to actually invest in the plugin. The original version worked, but it wasn't polished. So I shipped a proper update:

  • Cleaner UI — Rebuilt the plugin panel to feel less like a prototype
  • Smoother parametric controls — Real-time preview actually works reliably now
  • New icon types — Expanded the library with more shapes
  • Export-safe output — Each arrow is generated as two separate vectors: the line and the arrowhead. That means clean paths, no rendering bugs, and full control when exporting
  • Same core idea — Adjust, preview, place. Done.

Claude Code as CTO

Here's the honest part: I'm a designer. TypeScript and the Figma Plugin API aren't my native language. The original plugin was also built with AI — I just had less clarity about what I wanted back then, so it took more back-and-forth. The update was smoother — because I had Claude Code and I knew exactly what to ask for.

I described what I wanted in plain language. "The arrowhead angle should interpolate between a sharp geometric line and a rounded arc based on this roundness slider." Claude translated that into vector math and Figma API calls. I reviewed, tested, adjusted. We iterated fast.

This is what designer-builder looks like in 2026. You don't need to become a full-stack engineer. You need to be able to specify intent clearly and know when the output is correct. That's a design skill.

What's next

The milestone I'm watching is 10,000 users. Not because the number matters, but because it'll signal there's more to build here. If that happens, I want to add:

  • Curved arrow support with Bezier control handles
  • Multi-arrow batch generation
  • Saved presets per project

But only if people actually want those things. Right now it's solving the problem it was built for.

If you're a designer who's ever searched for an arrow in an icon library — try it.

Built with Claude Code. Shipped on Figma Community.