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excalix

by yasinmiran
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excalix

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Architecture diagrams from a topology spec, in Excalidraw's hand-drawn style. You write what exists and what talks to what; excalix does the layout, the shapes and colours, the text measurement and the arrow bindings, and the same spec always produces the same bytes.

order pipeline

{
  "title": "order pipeline",
  "direction": "lr",
  "groups": [
    { "id": "aws", "label": "AWS eu-north-1" },
    { "id": "k8s", "label": "EKS", "parent": "aws" }
  ],
  "nodes": [
    { "id": "web", "label": "Web app", "kind": "client" },
    { "id": "api", "label": "Order API", "kind": "service", "group": "k8s" },
    { "id": "worker", "label": "Fulfilment", "kind": "service", "group": "k8s" },
    { "id": "q", "label": "orders.created", "kind": "queue", "group": "aws" },
    { "id": "pg", "label": "Postgres", "kind": "datastore", "group": "aws" },
    { "id": "redis", "label": "Redis", "kind": "cache", "group": "aws" },
    { "id": "stripe", "label": "Stripe", "kind": "external" }
  ],
  "edges": [
    { "from": "web", "to": "api", "label": "POST /orders" },
    { "from": "api", "to": "pg" },
    { "from": "api", "to": "redis", "arrows": "both" },
    { "from": "api", "to": "q", "style": "async" },
    { "from": "q", "to": "worker", "style": "async" },
    { "from": "worker", "to": "stripe", "label": "charge" }
  ]
}

Out come an .excalidraw, an SVG and a PNG. The .excalidraw opens on excalidraw.com with every label and arrow binding intact, so you can keep editing by hand.

Install

Not on npm yet (#8).

git clone https://github.com/yasinmiran/excalix
cd excalix
pnpm install
pnpm exec playwright install chromium    export and text measurement run in headless Chromium
pnpm build

Related MCP server: arch7

Use

node dist/cli.js render spec.json -o out/spec    writes out/spec.excalidraw, .svg and .png
node dist/cli.js validate spec.json              every problem at once, or ok: 7 nodes, 6 edges, 2 groups
node dist/cli.js schema                          JSON Schema of the spec

With an agent, register the MCP server once. Its sketch tool takes the spec, writes the three files and returns the PNG in the same turn:

claude mcp add excalix --scope user -- node /absolute/path/to/excalix/dist/cli.js mcp
ln -s /absolute/path/to/excalix/skills/excalix ~/.claude/skills/excalix    the skill, so it knows when and how

The spec

nodes, edges, an optional title, direction (lr or tb) and groups, which nest through parent. A node sits in at most one group.

kind

draws as

client

whoever initiates requests: people, browsers, mobile apps

service

anything you run or configure yourself, an app or a load balancer alike

datastore

database or durable storage

queue

queue, topic or stream

cache

cache or in-memory store

external

a system another company operates and you only call

edge.style is sync (solid, default) or async (dashed). edge.arrows is forward (default), both or none. A \n in any label starts a new line.

List nodes in reading order, keep edge labels to a few words, and split anything past about twenty nodes into an overview and a detail diagram. skills/excalix/SKILL.md has the rest. Validation names every problem in one go:

edges[0].to: unknown node "apy", did you mean "api"?
nodes[2].kind: got "db", expected one of "client", "service", "datastore", "queue", "cache", "external"

Why

An .excalidraw file is nothing but coordinates, and an agent asked to draw one has to invent all of them. excalix takes the geometry away, so two diagrams made a year apart look like one set, and a change to the spec shows up as a reviewable diff.

DESIGN.md is the full contract. pnpm test and pnpm typecheck run the checks. MIT, and not affiliated with Excalidraw.

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Maintenance

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