Excalidraw MCP Server

Generate beautiful Excalidraw diagrams from natural language — entirely locally, no cloud API needed.

You describe what you want ("draw a microservices architecture for an e-commerce app"), and the MCP server calls your local llama.cpp LLM to produce a valid .excalidraw file you can open instantly.

How It Works

You (Claude Desktop / Cursor)
        ↓  natural language description
  MCP Server (this project)
        ↓  structured prompt + Excalidraw JSON spec
  llama.cpp  (localhost:8080)
        ↓  raw Excalidraw JSON
  MCP Server  →  validates + saves  →  ~/excalidraw_diagrams/my-diagram.excalidraw
        ↓
  Open in Excalidraw

Prerequisites

Setup

Step 1 — Build llama.cpp

git clone https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp
cd llama.cpp
cmake -B build
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

On macOS with Apple Silicon, add -DLLAMA_METAL=ON for GPU acceleration.

Step 2 — Download a GGUF model

Recommended models (best JSON output quality):

# Inside the llama.cpp directory:
mkdir models
# Download with huggingface-cli (pip install huggingface_hub):
huggingface-cli download Qwen/Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct-GGUF \
    qwen2.5-7b-instruct-q4_k_m.gguf \
    --local-dir models/

Step 3 — Start the llama.cpp server

# From inside the llama.cpp directory:
./build/bin/llama-server \
    -m models/qwen2.5-7b-instruct-q4_k_m.gguf \
    --port 8080 \
    -c 8192 \
    --host 0.0.0.0

Verify it's running:

curl http://localhost:8080/health
# → {"status":"ok"}

Step 4 — Install the MCP server

# Clone this repo
git clone <repo-url>
cd exclalidraw_mcp

# Install with uv (recommended)
uv sync

# Or with pip
pip install -e .

Verify the CLI entry point works:

excalidraw-mcp --help

Step 5 — Configure your MCP client

Claude Desktop (Linux)

Edit ~/.config/claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "excalidraw": {
      "command": "excalidraw-mcp"
    }
  }
}

If using uv, replace "command": "excalidraw-mcp" with:

"command": "uv",
"args": ["--directory", "/absolute/path/to/exclalidraw_mcp", "run", "excalidraw-mcp"]

Claude Desktop (macOS)

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json with the same content.

Cursor / VS Code

Add to your MCP settings with the same server config above.

Restart the app after editing the config.

Step 6 — Run Excalidraw locally (optional)

You can always use excalidraw.com for free. But to run it fully locally:

docker run -p 5000:80 excalidraw/excalidraw:latest
# Open http://localhost:5000

Or via Node:

npx excalidraw

Usage

Once the MCP server is connected, ask your AI client:

Generate a flowchart for a user login system with OAuth

Draw a microservices architecture for an e-commerce platform with cart, payment, and inventory services

Create a mind map about machine learning: supervised, unsupervised, reinforcement learning

Make a sequence diagram showing a REST API request from browser to server to database and back

Draw an ER diagram for a blog: users, posts, comments, tags

Available MCP Tools

generate_diagram parameters

Opening a generated diagram

Diagrams are saved to ~/excalidraw_diagrams/.

1. Open excalidraw.com or your local instance

2. Click the folder icon (top left) → Open

3. Select your .excalidraw file

Running Tests

# Install test dependencies
uv add --dev pytest pytest-anyio respx

# Run all tests
pytest tests/ -v

Troubleshooting

"llama.cpp server is not running"

Run curl http://localhost:8080/health. If it fails, start the server (Step 3).

"Could not parse LLM output as valid Excalidraw JSON"

The LLM returned malformed JSON. Try:

• Use a better model (Qwen2.5-7B or larger)

• Ensure llama.cpp started with -c 8192 (enough context)

• Try a simpler description first to verify the pipeline works

"Diagram looks wrong / missing elements"

• Be more specific in your description

• Specify diagram_type explicitly (e.g., "flowchart" not "freeform")

• Larger models (13B+) produce significantly better layout

Tool not appearing in Claude Desktop

• Confirm claude_desktop_config.json has no JSON syntax errors

• Restart Claude Desktop fully

• Check logs: ~/.config/claude/logs/ (Linux) or ~/Library/Logs/Claude/ (macOS)

Project Structure

exclalidraw_mcp/
├── src/excalidraw_mcp/
│   ├── server.py       ← MCP server + tool definitions
│   ├── llm_client.py   ← llama.cpp HTTP client
│   ├── generator.py    ← Prompt building + JSON parsing + validation
│   └── schema.py       ← Excalidraw element dataclasses
├── prompts/
│   └── examples/       ← Few-shot example diagrams (flowchart, mindmap, sequence)
├── examples/
│   └── sample.excalidraw  ← Reference diagram you can open immediately
├── tests/
│   ├── test_generator.py
│   └── test_llm_client.py
├── pyproject.toml
└── README.md

Tips for Better Diagrams

1. Be specific: "login flow with email/password, JWT token, and session storage" beats "login flow"

2. Name your elements: "boxes labeled A, B, C connected by arrows" → Excalidraw follows your naming

3. Specify colors: "use blue for services, yellow for databases"

4. Keep it focused: One logical concept per diagram works better than trying to show everything

5. Regenerate freely: If the first result isn't perfect, ask again with a different filename — it's instant

License

MIT