Excalidraw toolkit for AI coding agents — agent skill, CLI, and MCP server with a live canvas
Most developer tooling work still happens through a UI a human drives. MCP Excalidraw MCP server moves it into the conversation instead. Excalidraw toolkit for AI coding agents — agent skill, CLI, and MCP server with a live canvas.
Core drawing runs fully local (Node ≥ 18, MIT licensed) — no API keys. Mermaid conversion runs in the local browser canvas; share is optional and uploads an encrypted scene to excalidraw.com.
The server publishes 7 tools. What each one is for:
Category — ToolsLayout — align_elements, distribute_elements, group_elements, ungroup_elements, lock_elements, unlock_elementsViewport — set_viewportResources — get_resourceCursor — Config location: .cursor/mcp.json in your project root (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for global config)OpenCode — Config location: ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json or project-level opencode.jsonNotes — The Notes tool exposed by this serverThe server ships on npm as mcp-excalidraw-server, so your MCP client can launch it on demand — there is no separate build step. Add the server block to your client's configuration, restart it, and the tools register themselves.
Configuration is passed through the environment: EXPRESS_SERVER_URL, ENABLE_CANVAS_SYNC. Treat anything key-shaped as a real credential — scope it to the minimum the server needs, and rotate it if it ever lands in a shared config.
This sits in the developer tooling group, where several servers overlap in what they claim to do but differ sharply once you actually set them up. MCP Excalidraw's toolset — Category, Layout, Viewport and 4 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by yctimlin; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.
We check each listing at SyncDev against the project's documentation before it goes live — if something here drifts out of date, it is a bug worth reporting.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Category | Tools |
| Layout | align_elements, distribute_elements, group_elements, ungroup_elements, lock_elements, unlock_elements |
| Viewport | set_viewport |
| Resources | get_resource |
| Cursor | Config location: .cursor/mcp.json in your project root (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for global config) |
| OpenCode | Config location: ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json or project-level opencode.json |
| Notes | The Notes tool exposed by this server. |
{
"mcpServers": {
"excalidraw": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "mcp-excalidraw-server"]
}
}
}Configuration as documented by the project. Restart the client after saving.
| Variable | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| EXPRESS_SERVER_URL | Endpoint or connection string the server talks to. | Yes |
| ENABLE_CANVAS_SYNC | Configuration value read at startup. | Optional |
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