If your Figma seat is limited (View / Collab)
Workarounds for Figma View and Collab seats that keep hitting API rate limits in KopiMark, and what cache-only mode lets you keep doing offline.
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KopiMark talks to Figma using your personal access token, which means your Figma seat type is what governs the API quota. Editor seats are generous. View and Collab seats are not.
If you’re seeing the yellow “we turned on cache-only mode” banner in your Profile more than once a week, this guide is for you.
Background — Figma sync and cache-only mode explains why this happens. This page is what to do about it.
Quick triage
- Hit the banner on a busy import day? It’s probably a transient spike. Flip the toggle back to off, wait a few minutes, and try the re-sync again.
- Hitting it repeatedly across a week? Your seat doesn’t have enough quota for your usage. Use one of the workarounds below.
- You don’t even have a token yet? Cache-only is locked on by default. Connect Figma first; the demo project works without a token but your own files don’t.
Workaround 1 — use a teammate’s Editor token
The cleanest fix. Tokens are personal, so any teammate with a paid Editor seat can issue one for KopiMark to use.
Pros:
- KopiMark stops switching to cache-only on you.
- You keep working from your own Figma seat in Figma itself.
Cons:
- The token identifies as the teammate inside KopiMark’s sync logs.
- If they leave the team or rotate the token, sync stops.
Worth it if you’re the lone Collab seat on a team of Editors.
Workaround 2 — stay in cache-only most of the time
Cache-only is more useful than it sounds. With the toggle on, you can:
- Edit copy and translations on every page you’ve ever imported
- Post comments, mention teammates, resolve threads
- Assign and reorder statuses
- Run AI translation (it doesn’t call Figma)
- Export
You can’t:
- Import a new Figma page
- Re-sync after a design change
A reasonable pattern: keep cache-only on while you work, flip it off briefly when the designer says “the design is updated”, run the re-sync, then flip it back on. KopiMark’s toggle is a one-click thing.
Workaround 3 — upgrade your Figma seat
If KopiMark is core to your weekly workflow and you’re the only person on the team without an Editor seat, the math probably works out. Talk to whoever manages your Figma billing.
How KopiMark behaves under rate limiting
When a Figma API call from your token returns a 429:
- KopiMark flips your cache-only toggle to on and stores the reason.
- The next time you load your Profile, you see the yellow banner: “We turned this on for you because Figma rate-limited a recent request from your token.”
- Subsequent KopiMark requests skip Figma entirely until you turn the toggle off.
The toggle is in Profile settings. You can flip it back any time — the banner is information, not a lock.
FAQ
Can I use a teammate’s Figma Editor token instead of my own?
Yes. Figma tokens are personal, so any teammate with a paid Editor seat can generate one for KopiMark to use. The trade-off: the token identifies as that person inside KopiMark’s sync logs, and if they leave the team or rotate the token, sync stops until you paste a new one.
Does the demo project use my Figma API quota?
No. The demo project runs from a pre-built cache that KopiMark bakes at signup, so it works without a token and doesn’t consume any Figma API calls.
Will I lose work if KopiMark switches me to cache-only mode?
No. Cache-only only blocks fresh fetches from Figma. You can still edit copy and translations, post comments, assign statuses, run AI translation, and export — everything saves normally inside KopiMark.
After an automatic cache-only switch, how long should I wait before flipping it back?
A few minutes is usually enough for a transient spike. If you flip it off and the next re-sync still fails with a 429, your seat doesn’t have enough quota for your usage pattern — use one of the workarounds above instead.