Fighill

Figma widgets don't support drag-and-drop. That's the constraint that shaped everything about how Fighill works.

I built Fighill to bring Basecamp's Hill Chart concept into Figma — a way for design teams to visualize project progress that reflects the non-linear reality of design work, directly inside their design files. The idea was simple. Getting it to work wasn't.

The intended interaction was obvious: drag tasks along a hill curve to show progress. But Figma's widget API doesn't expose drag events. I had to rethink the core interaction model entirely. The solution was an Edit Mode with a slider — less visceral than dragging, but it turned out to be more precise and worked better for teams updating multiple tasks at once. Sometimes a constraint produces a better outcome than the original idea.

I built the first working version in two evening coding sessions. I shipped publicly at the end of January 2025 after building in the open on Threads and LinkedIn, collecting feedback throughout. The widget hit 1,000 users in three weeks. It's been iterated on continuously since — task editing, color customization, improved add flow — all driven by direct user feedback.

Fighill is still live and actively used. It's the clearest example I have of what I do when I decide something should exist: identify the constraint, find the path through it, ship, and iterate.

🎬 If you want to have a quick visual representation of the plugin, I suggest watching the video manual