The design-to-development handoff is where a lot of Framer projects hit friction — the design is done and approved, but "done in Framer" and "ready for a dev team to build on" are different things.
Why this handoff is harder with Framer than with, say, Figma
A Figma handoff is inherently a reference — developers were always going to build the actual site in code from that reference. A Framer handoff is different because the site is often already fully built and published — the question isn't "build this from a design," it's "take this already-working thing and make it something engineering can extend," which raises the bar for what "handoff" even means.
What to actually hand off
- The live published URL, obviously — but also access to the Framer project itself if any further design iteration will happen there before the code handoff is final.
- A real code export, not just the design reference. If engineering is going to extend this site, they need an actual project structure to work from — see our guide on what a Framer-to-Next.js export for developers actually looks like.
- A list of anything interactive that needs explicit verification — forms, custom animations, CMS-driven pages — since these are exactly the things most likely to need engineering attention post-export (see our posts on forms and hover effects after export specifically).
- Domain and DNS ownership clarity — who controls the domain, and is it moving to new hosting as part of this handoff, or staying put with just the codebase changing underneath it.
The mistake that causes the most rework
Treating the export as the finish line rather than the starting point. A code export gets you real, buildable code — it doesn't automatically mean every interaction is production-verified. The teams that have the smoothest handoffs budget explicit QA time post-export: click through every page, test every form, resize through every breakpoint, before calling the handoff complete.
If you're the agency doing the handing off
Being upfront with the client about what does and doesn't survive an export (see our agency-specific guide on Framer to HTML for client handoff) sets expectations correctly from the start, rather than surprising a development team — or the client — after the fact.