Skip to main content
Glama
yasinmiran

excalix

by yasinmiran
OverviewSchemaSourceRelated ServersDiscussionsAdmin
TypeScript
Local

excalix

ci npm docs

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

Node 22 or newer. Export and text measurement run in headless Chromium, which is a separate download:

npx -y playwright@1.63.0 install chromium

Related MCP server: Excalidraw Architect MCP

Use

npx -y excalix render spec.json -o out/spec    writes out/spec.excalidraw, .svg and .png
npx -y excalix validate spec.json              every problem at once, or ok: 7 nodes, 6 edges, 2 groups
npx -y excalix 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 -- npx -y excalix mcp

The skill tells the agent when to reach for it and how to write a spec that lays out well:

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills/excalix
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yasinmiran/excalix/main/skills/excalix/SKILL.md -o ~/.claude/skills/excalix/SKILL.md

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.

The docs have the full spec reference, the sketch tool's contract and more examples. pnpm test and pnpm typecheck run the checks. MIT, and not affiliated with Excalidraw.

This server cannot be deployed

Shareable, User-Owned Context BackendPeople, applications, and agents read, write, and coordinate together in one context lake. Reach it over MCP, a CLI, a Python SDK, or REST.fulcradynamics.comAd

Maintenance

ActivityMaintained
ResponsivenessSlow

Resources

Related MCP Connectors

Related MCP Servers

  • Excalidraw Architect MCP

    PaoloMulder18706
    F
    license
    Not graded
    quality
    A
    maintenance
    Enables AI assistants to turn plain-language descriptions of systems, flows, and data into 25 kinds of fully laid-out, hand-drawn Excalidraw diagrams — architecture, sequence, ER, swimlane, Gantt, charts and more — with auto-styling for 50+ technologies and revision in natural language. Runs fully offline, exports to SVG and PNG without a browser or Node.js, and can optionally persist the architecture as a queryable knowledge graph.
    -

  • Excalidraw Architect MCP

    Murphy4837
    F
    license
    Not graded
    quality
    A
    maintenance
    Enables AI assistants to generate auto-laid-out, hand-drawn-style Excalidraw diagrams across 25 diagram types from natural-language structure descriptions, with SVG/PNG export and natural-language revision. Runs fully offline without API keys and can persist the described system as a queryable architecture knowledge graph.
    -

  • Excalidraw Architect MCP

    serkanwilson
    F
    license
    Not graded
    quality
    A
    maintenance
    Enables AI assistants to turn natural-language descriptions of systems, flows, and data into 25 types of hand-drawn Excalidraw diagrams with automatic layout and architecture-aware styling, then revise them conversationally and export to SVG or PNG. It can also persist a system as a version-controlled, queryable architecture knowledge graph, running fully offline without API keys.
    -