By Mehdi HassanFramer is a great place to design and launch a marketing site, and many teams eventually want the same site in code: to share components with the product, to add custom features, or to control costs as they grow. AI coding agents make that rebuild far faster than it used to be. This guide covers how to rebuild a Framer site in Next.js with an agent, how to carry over its animations, and the specific mistakes AI conversions make. For the broader view, see our hub on AI-assisted website migration.
Can you convert a Framer site to Next.js code using AI?
Yes, you can convert a Framer site to Next.js using AI, as long as you treat it as an AI-assisted rebuild. Our research confirmed that Framer can't export a real codebase, and no converter produces maintainable code from a Framer project. An agent such as Claude Code or Cursor can read the published site and rebuild it as Next.js components and pages.
The good news is that Framer sites are well suited to this. Framer is built on React, and its animation system is closely related to the open-source Motion library (formerly Framer Motion), so the concepts carry over cleanly. The published HTML is clean enough for an agent to read structure and content. What it doesn't give you is intent: why a layout behaves a certain way at each breakpoint, or how an effect is supposed to feel. That's what a human has to supply.
Part of the site | How well AI converts it | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
Page structure and copy | Well | Headings and semantic tags, not just divs |
Layout and spacing | Fairly well | Framer stacks to flexbox; fixed sizes to responsive |
Breakpoints | Poorly by default | Framer's separate layouts per breakpoint |
Appear and scroll effects | Well, with Motion | Content hidden until animation runs |
Hover and press states | Fairly well | Variants that only exist in the editor |
CMS collections | Well, once exported | Slugs, references and rich text |
Code components | Well | Framer-specific property controls to remove |
How do you rebuild a Framer site in Next.js with AI step by step?
You rebuild a Framer site in Next.js with AI by inventorying the site, setting up the design system, rebuilding pages component by component, porting animations, migrating CMS content, then running visual and SEO checks before switching domains. The agent does the heavy build; you set the rules and judge the result.
Inventory the site
Crawl every published URL and save its HTML, title, description and canonical. List CMS collections, forms, embeds and scripts.
Record the motion
Screen-record each page scrolling and hovering at desktop and mobile widths. The recordings become the animation spec for the agent.
Extract the design system
Have the agent pull colors, fonts, type sizes and spacing from Framer's published styles into tokens, then build shared components.
Rebuild pages one at a time
For each page, give the agent its saved HTML, the recording and the component list. Review each page before starting the next.
Port the animations
Recreate appear, scroll and hover effects with Motion, using the recordings to match timing and easing.
Migrate the CMS
Export collections, transform them into your new CMS or content files, re-host images and keep slugs identical.
QA, redirect and launch
Screenshot-diff old and new pages at each breakpoint, test redirects and forms, then move the domain.
The workflow is close to the one we describe for Webflow in our Claude Code migration walkthrough; the differences are mostly in breakpoints and motion. If your designs also live in Figma, it can be faster to build from the Figma files than from the published site. Our guide to Figma to Next.js covers that route, and our comparison of Figma-to-code AI tools explains how Figma's MCP server and similar tools fit in.
How do you carry over Framer Motion animations to code?
You carry over Framer animations to code by recreating each effect with the Motion library for React, which shares its concepts with Framer's effects: an initial state, an animated state, a transition, and triggers like appearing in view, hovering or tapping. Because the vocabulary matches, agents translate these well when given a clear description of each effect.
The common mappings are straightforward. Framer's appear effects become Motion components with an initial and animate state. Scroll-into-view effects use Motion's in-view triggers. Hover and press effects become hover and tap states. Scroll-linked effects, such as parallax or progress bars, use Motion's scroll hooks. What doesn't carry over automatically is feel: the exact spring, delay and stagger. That's why the screen recordings matter, and why someone should compare old and new side by side.
This is also a good moment to cut animation that delays rather than explains. Rebuilding forces you to look at every effect, and many Framer sites accumulate entrances on every section. Our guide to Core Web Vitals on Framer, Webflow and Next.js covers the platform-specific speed fixes, motion included.
What do AI conversions from Framer to code usually get wrong?
AI conversions from Framer to code usually get responsive behavior, text sizing, hidden-until-animated content and component structure wrong. The output often looks right at one screen width and breaks at others, because Framer designs separate layouts for each breakpoint and the agent only sees one rendered version at a time.
- Breakpoints. Framer can use different layouts for desktop, tablet and phone. Capture each page at every breakpoint and give the agent all versions, or it'll guess.
- Fixed sizes. Framer layouts often include fixed widths and heights that work in the editor. In code, they should become fluid layouts and max-widths.
- Generated class names. Published Framer HTML has machine-generated classes. Tell the agent to ignore them and build semantic components instead.
- Text scaling. Font sizes that change per breakpoint get flattened to one size unless you specify a fluid type scale.
- Duplicate components. The agent may build three near-identical cards instead of one with variants. Review for reuse early.
- Code components. Custom React components from Framer need their Framer-specific property controls removed and props cleaned up.
For example, suppose a Framer site has a pricing section that reflows
For example, suppose a hypothetical SaaS site built in Framer shows three pricing cards side by side on desktop, a horizontal scroller on tablet, and stacked cards with a monthly or annual toggle on phones. An agent working from the desktop HTML alone builds three cards in a row and lets them squash on small screens. Given screenshots of all three breakpoints and a sentence describing the behavior, it builds one pricing component with a responsive grid, a scroll container for tablet widths and the toggle on mobile. The difference is entirely in the brief, not the tool.
How do you move Framer CMS content and keep SEO?
You move Framer CMS content by exporting each collection, transforming it into your new CMS or content files, re-hosting images and keeping every slug identical, so URLs don't change. Then you carry over each page's title, description and Open Graph data, and redirect anything that does change.
Check Framer's current CMS documentation for its export options; if a collection is awkward to export, the agent can rebuild entries from the published pages, since each item has its own URL. Rich text and images need spot checks. Framer's CMS limits, such as how collections can reference each other (check Framer's current docs), are a common reason to move; when you design the new content model, add the relationships Framer couldn't hold. Make sure the new site renders HTML on the server or at build time, which Next.js does by default; our guide to server-side rendering for AI crawlers explains why that matters for answer engines too.
Should you leave Framer for code at all?
You should leave Framer for code when you need what Framer can't give: deeper CMS relationships, API access, shared components with your product, custom functionality, or more control over cost and performance. Teams that mostly need marketers to ship pages quickly are often better off staying, since a coded site moves editing toward developers.
Pros
- You own a real codebase and can share components and data with your product.
- No limits on CMS structure, integrations or custom features.
- Framer's effects translate well to the Motion library, so the site can keep its feel.
Cons
- Marketers lose Framer's visual editing unless you set up a CMS and page-building blocks.
- Someone technical has to maintain the site, hosting and dependencies.
- The rebuild still needs careful QA on breakpoints, motion and redirects.
Some teams go the other way, moving from code to Framer so marketing can ship without engineers; our guide to Next.js to Framer migration covers that. For costs, see our Framer to Next.js migration cost guide, and for help deciding between doing it yourself and hiring, our comparison of AI migration versus agency migration. We build in both Framer and Next.js and rebuild Framer sites with agents; migration work is scoped on the intro call, and we include redirects and SEO checks in any migration we take on.
