cli-anything-drawio

A CLI harness for Draw.io — create, edit, and export diagrams from the command line.

Designed for AI agents and power users who need to generate diagrams programmatically.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• draw.io desktop app (for PNG/PDF/SVG export):
  • macOS: brew install --cask drawio
  • Linux: snap install drawio
  • Windows: winget install JGraph.Draw

Note: The CLI can create and manipulate .drawio files without the desktop app installed. The app is only needed for rasterized export (PNG, PDF, SVG).

Installation

cd drawio/agent-harness
pip install -e .

Usage

One-shot commands

# Create a new diagram
cli-anything-drawio project new --preset letter -o diagram.drawio

# Add shapes
cli-anything-drawio --project diagram.drawio shape add rectangle --label "Server"
cli-anything-drawio --project diagram.drawio shape add cylinder --label "Database" --x 300 --y 100

# Connect shapes
cli-anything-drawio --project diagram.drawio connect add <source_id> <target_id>

# Export
cli-anything-drawio --project diagram.drawio export render output.png -f png
cli-anything-drawio --project diagram.drawio export render output.svg -f svg

JSON mode (for AI agents)

cli-anything-drawio --json project new -o diagram.drawio
cli-anything-drawio --json --project diagram.drawio shape add rectangle --label "API"
cli-anything-drawio --json --project diagram.drawio shape list

Interactive REPL

cli-anything-drawio
# or
cli-anything-drawio repl --project diagram.drawio

Command Reference

Shape Types

rectangle, rounded, ellipse, diamond, triangle, hexagon, cylinder, cloud, parallelogram, process, document, callout, note, actor, text

Edge Styles

straight, orthogonal, curved, entity-relation

Running Tests

cd drawio/agent-harness
python3 -m pytest cli_anything/drawio/tests/ -v