Draw.io MCP Server

The official draw.io MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that enables LLMs to create and open diagrams in the draw.io editor.

Four Ways to Create Diagrams

This repository offers four approaches for integrating draw.io with AI assistants. Pick the one that fits your setup:

MCP App Server

The MCP App server renders draw.io diagrams inline in AI chat interfaces using the MCP Apps protocol. Instead of opening a browser tab, diagrams appear directly in the conversation as interactive iframes.

The official hosted endpoint is available at:

https://mcp.draw.io/mcp

Add this URL as a remote MCP server in Claude.ai, Cursor, or any MCP Apps-compatible host — no installation required. On Claude.ai, draw.io is also listed in the connector directory and can be added from there in one click. In Cursor (≥ 2.6), diagrams render inline in the Agent chat (one-click install); on older builds, use the stdio @drawio/mcp tool server instead.

You can also run the server locally via Node.js or the jgraph/drawio-mcp Docker image, or deploy your own instance to Cloudflare Workers.

Tools:

• create_diagram — Renders draw.io XML as an interactive diagram inline in chat
• search_shapes — Searches 10,000+ shapes across all draw.io libraries (AWS, Azure, GCP, P&ID, electrical, Cisco, Kubernetes, UML, BPMN, etc.) by keyword, supplemented by the draw.io icon service (brand logos and general-purpose concept icons) when the built-in libraries have no good match. Returns exact style strings that can be used directly in XML. Use this to find the correct shape before calling create_diagram.

Full documentation →

Note: Inline diagram rendering requires an MCP host that supports the MCP Apps extension. In hosts without MCP Apps support, the tool still works but returns the XML as text.

MCP Tool Server

The original MCP server that opens diagrams directly in the draw.io editor. Supports XML, CSV, and Mermaid.js formats with lightbox and dark mode options. Published as @drawio/mcp on npm.

Quick start: npx @drawio/mcp

Setup instructions are available for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, VS Code (GitHub Copilot), Cursor (with one-click install), and OpenCode.

Full documentation →

Assistant Plugins (Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot)

The drawio skill packaged as a plugin for AI coding assistants (under plugins/): it generates native .drawio files, with optional export to PNG, SVG, or PDF (with embedded XML so the exported file remains editable in draw.io) — or a browser URL that opens the diagram directly in app.diagrams.net. No MCP setup required. The same skill ships for three hosts:

Claude Code (full documentation →) — install from this repo's marketplace:

/plugin marketplace add jgraph/drawio-mcp
/plugin install drawio@drawio

Or load it directly from a local clone with claude --plugin-dir ./plugins/claude-code.

Codex CLI (full documentation →) — install from the same marketplace repo:

codex plugin marketplace add jgraph/drawio-mcp
codex plugin add drawio@drawio

GitHub Copilot CLI (full documentation →) — install from the same marketplace repo:

copilot plugin marketplace add jgraph/drawio-mcp
copilot plugin install drawio@drawio

Other Copilot surfaces (VS Code agent mode, the coding agent, code review) load the same skill from a repo's .github/skills/ directory instead — see the plugin README.

OpenCode needs no plugin at all: it discovers skills in .opencode/skills/ and .claude/skills/ (and their ~/ equivalents), so the Claude Code skill folder works as-is — see OpenCode (no plugin needed) for the one-line install.

By default, the plugin writes a .drawio file and opens it in draw.io. Mention a format in your request to change the output:

• png / svg / pdf — exports using the draw.io desktop CLI with --embed-diagram
• url — compresses the XML with Node.js's built-in zlib and opens the result at app.diagrams.net. No draw.io Desktop needed; the .drawio file is kept locally as a persistent copy.

Alternative: Project Instructions (No MCP Required)

An alternative approach that works without installing anything. Add instructions to a Claude Project that teach Claude to generate draw.io URLs using Python code execution. No MCP server, no desktop app — just paste and go.

Full documentation →

Diagram layouts

Two optional, independent layout passes can run after the AI generates a diagram — one re-arranges the nodes, the other only reroutes the edges. Which are available depends on the approach:

• These apply to draw.io XML diagrams. Mermaid diagrams are auto-laid-out already, so neither pass is needed.
• The App Server applies these in the inline viewer after the diagram renders; the Tool Server applies libavoid server-side before opening the draw.io editor; the plugins run them through the locally installed draw.io Desktop CLI.
• Pick one, not both: ELK already routes its own edges, so adding libavoid on top is redundant. Use postLayout to re-arrange a layout, or routing to tidy the connectors on a layout you placed deliberately.

Data Residency & Offline Use

If you're deploying in an environment with strict data restrictions, here is exactly where diagram data goes for each approach.

No component sends your diagram to a cloud rasterizer. convert.diagrams.net (or any cloud export endpoint) is not called anywhere in this repository, and there is no "local dependency missing → fall back to cloud" path. PNG/SVG/PDF export happens only in the assistant plugins, which shell out to your locally installed draw.io Desktop CLI (located via which drawio); if it isn't installed, the .drawio file is kept and nothing is sent.

Does your diagram leave the machine?

By default the servers do not write diagram content to their logs — only request metadata (method, session, status, timing). The Cloudflare-hosted App Server logs response bodies only when run with DEBUG=true.

Reducing external requests

Even when the diagram itself stays local, the rendering loads draw.io's web-app / viewer code from app.diagrams.net and viewer.diagrams.net by default. These fetch application code and assets — not your diagram — but they are still outbound requests. To reduce or remove them: