illustrator-mcp

MCP server that drives Adobe Illustrator on Windows. It talks to Illustrator over COM automation (New-Object -ComObject Illustrator.Application in PowerShell) and runs ExtendScript (Illustrator's JS-based scripting language) inside it via app.DoJavaScript. No native Node addon or Visual Studio build tools are required — everything goes through powershell.exe, which ships with Windows.

Requirements

• Windows with Adobe Illustrator installed (tested against Illustrator 2026 / app version 30.8).

• Node.js 18+.

Related MCP server: illustrator-mcp

Setup

npm install
npm run build

Register with Claude Code

claude mcp add illustrator-mcp -- node E:/Repositorios/illustrator-mcp/dist/index.js

(Restart your Claude Code session afterwards so it picks up the new server.)

Tools

• illustrator_status — connects to Illustrator (launching it if needed) and lists open documents.

• illustrator_create_document — new document (width/height in points, RGB or CMYK).

• illustrator_open_document — open an existing .ai/.eps/.pdf/.svg file.

• illustrator_save_document — save in place, or Save As if given a path.

• illustrator_export_document — export the active document to png/jpg/pdf/svg.

• illustrator_add_rectangle / illustrator_add_ellipse — draw a shape with an optional hex fill/stroke.

• illustrator_add_text — add a point-text frame.

• illustrator_document_info — name, path, size, artboards, layers of the active document.

• illustrator_run_script — escape hatch: runs arbitrary ExtendScript and returns the last expression's value as a string. Use this for anything the other tools don't cover (selections, layers, effects, batch processing, Illustrator's full object model).

All coordinates for shapes/text are in points, measured from the top-left of the artboard (the tools convert to Illustrator's native bottom-left-origin coordinate system internally).

How it works

Each tool call renders a small ExtendScript snippet, writes it to a temp .jsx file, and shells out to scripts/run-illustrator.ps1, which connects to Illustrator via COM and evaluates that file with $.evalFile(...). The script's return value (its last expression) comes back as the tool's text output. Errors thrown inside the ExtendScript are caught and surfaced as tool errors instead of crashing the bridge.