Excalidraw for AI agents
Excalidraw is a whiteboard tool for creating hand-drawn style diagrams, used for quick sketches, flowcharts, and system diagrams during planning conversations and design reviews. Connect it once through Arc0, and your agent, or Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor, can use it through one MCP endpoint, limited to what each user approved.
What agents do in Excalidraw.
Create a new diagram view
Create a new view to sketch out a flow a user described in a planning conversation.
Save a diagram checkpoint
Save a checkpoint of a diagram's current state so progress is not lost mid-edit.
Export a finished diagram
Export a diagram to a shareable file once the sketch is ready to send to the team.
5 Excalidraw actions, graded by risk.
Every Excalidraw action is tagged read, write or destructive, so one policy covers the whole app and new actions inherit the right default.
read
3Look things up. Allowed by default.
- excalidraw.read_meRead me
- excalidraw.read_checkpointRead checkpoint
- excalidraw.export_to_excalidrawExport to excalidraw
write
2Create and change things. Allow, or ask the user first.
- excalidraw.create_viewCreate view
- excalidraw.save_checkpointSave checkpoint
destructive
0Delete, cancel or archive. Ask first, or deny outright.
- No destructive actions.
Excalidraw in three steps.
- 01Your users connect ExcalidrawThey add their Excalidraw no auth on Arc0 Connect, under your brand. It goes straight into the vault.
- 02You set the rulesReads run, and writes like “create view” can wait for the user to approve.
- 03Any agent can actYour agent calls Excalidraw through the Arc0 SDK or MCP, and so can Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor. Every call lands on the audit log.
await arc0.policies.set('excalidraw', { read: 'allow', write: 'ask', // create_view destructive: 'deny', }) # Claude Code: the same connection, one URL $ claude mcp add --transport http arc0 \ https://mcp.arc0.ai/u/u_8f2
How Excalidraw connects.
Excalidraw needs no credentials. Arc0 still applies your policies and records every call, so public tools get the same controls as private ones.
The same Excalidraw connection serves your agent over MCP and your own backend over REST and the proxy, so a user connects once. How Arc0 handles credentials →
- AUTH
- No auth
- CREDENTIALS
- Per-tenant encrypted vault
- MODEL SEES
- Results only, never credentials
- AUDIT LOG
- Every call, on every plan
Use Excalidraw from any agent.
ClaudeChatGPTCursor
Codex
VS CodeOpenAI Agents SDKClaude Agent SDK
Vercel AI SDK
Mastra
LangGraph
Excalidraw and Arc0, answered.
Can I use Excalidraw with Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor?
Yes. Connect Excalidraw to Arc0 once, then add your Arc0 MCP URL to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Code or any other remote-MCP client. Each assistant only gets the Excalidraw actions you allow.
How do users connect Excalidraw?
Excalidraw needs no credentials. Arc0 still applies your policies and records every call, so public tools get the same controls as private ones.
Which Excalidraw actions can my agent take?
5 in total: 3 read, 2 write and 0 destructive, such as “create view”. Your policies decide which of them each agent may call.
Can I make my agent read-only in Excalidraw?
Yes. Allow read actions and deny writes in the Excalidraw policy. Your agent can still look things up, and any write it attempts is blocked and logged.
Can my own backend call Excalidraw too?
Yes. The same Excalidraw connection is available over REST and through the Arc0 proxy, so your product and your agent share one connection per user.
Plug Excalidraw into your agent.
Your users connect Excalidraw once, under your brand. Your agent gets 5 actions behind your policies, with every call on the record.
Free to build · MCP + REST · Audit log on every plan