OntoInk

Interactive ontology visualization, SHACL validation, and live TTL editing for MkDocs.

OntoInk is a MkDocs plugin that turns RDF/Turtle files into interactive, publication-ready ontology diagrams with SHACL constraint visualization. Write a code block in your markdown and OntoInk renders a fully interactive graph.

Live demo & full documentation →

Install

pip install ontoink

Use

# mkdocs.yml
plugins:
  - search
  - ontoink

markdown_extensions:
  - pymdownx.superfences:
      preserve_tabs: true

```ontoink
source: shapes/foaf-person/shape-data.ttl
shape: shapes/foaf-person/shape.ttl
height: 600px
```

Then mkdocs serve. See Getting Started for all fence options, GitHub Pages deployment and reasoner setup.

What you get

• Interactive graphs — formal ontology notation, six layouts, pan/zoom/search, minimap, level-of-detail and clustering for large ontologies, style presets (OntoInk, Chowlk, Graffoo, VOWL)
• Editable layout — colours, shapes, edge styles, shape size and fonts; multi-select with Ctrl+click and a right-click menu for align / distribute / arrange, selection-scoped ontology actions, and undo
• SHACL — constraint overlay on the graph, build-time validation with pySHACL, live re-validation in the inline TTL editor
• Shape recommendation — generate sh:NodeShapes for classes with no coverage, from instance data and OWL axioms, with the evidence behind every constraint; or right-click a class and accept proposed constraints one click at a time as they appear on the graph
• OWL reasoning — HermiT, Konclude (native or WASM) or owlrl, with inferred triples overlaid on the graph, consistency checking, and a proof tree explaining any inference the in-page reasoner made
• CI gates — competency questions as executable fences, shape-drift detection, plus ontoink-report.json and README badges written on every build
• Analytics — ontology metrics, SHACL coverage, shortest paths, in-page SPARQL, and OntoSniff quality checks with a 0–100 score
• Publication-ready export — PNG/SVG with legend and namespace prefixes, plus TTL download
• Browser-only tools — Playground · SHACL Editor · SPARQL Explorer · OntoSniff
• Embeddable — ontoink.embed() mounts a graph in any page, under a strict CSP, with no CDN

Documentation

Development

git clone https://github.com/ISE-FIZKarlsruhe/ontoink.git
cd ontoink
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -v          # see TESTING.md for the full local test guide
cd demo && mkdocs serve

Contributions welcome — please open an issue first to discuss proposed changes, add tests, and make sure pytest passes.

Requirements

Python ≥ 3.9 · MkDocs ≥ 1.4 · rdflib ≥ 6.0 · pySHACL ≥ 0.25 · pymdown-extensions ≥ 10.0. Browser-side dependencies (Cytoscape.js, dagre, CodeMirror) are vendored — no npm, no CDN.

License & citation

MIT — see LICENSE. If you use OntoInk in published work, please cite it via CITATION.cff; when using either Konclude backend, additionally cite Liebig et al. (2014), Konclude: System Description, Journal of Web Semantics 27-28, 78-85. See NOTICE for full attribution of the bundled reasoners.

Author

Ebrahim Norouzi — FIZ Karlsruhe, ISE. Developed in the context of NFDI and NFDI-MatWerk; visualization powered by Cytoscape.js.