Rajeev Pentyala – Technical Blog on Power Platform, Azure and AI

In this article, let’s explore how the Excalidraw MCP Server, combined with Claude Code Desktop, can help you generate clean, professional architecture diagrams directly from natural language prompts.

For solution architects and developers, this is especially useful when you want to quickly visualize an idea, validate a design, or create a first draft of an architecture diagram without manually drawing every component.

What is Excalidraw MCP?

• Excalidraw is a popular open-source virtual whiteboard tool that produces hand-drawn-style diagrams.
• The Excalidraw MCP Server exposes Excalidraw’s rendering engine as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool.
• When connected to Claude Code Desktop, this means you can describe your architecture in plain English and get a fully rendered, editable diagram — instantly.

Prerequisites:

I’ll use an Event Registration Power Platform solution as the scenario throughout this walkthrough.

Add the Excalidraw MCP Server to Claude Code Desktop:

• Open Claude Code Desktop.
• Navigate to Settings → Connectors.
• Click on Browse connectors

• Search for Excaldraw and click on Connect

• Restart Claude Code Desktop.
• You should see excalidraw listed as a connected MCP server as shown below.

Prompt Claude to Generate the Architecture Diagram:

• Open a New Chat
• Give a prompt:

Use ExcalDraw. A user visits a Power Pages website to register for an event. They fill out a registration form, make payment through Stripe, and receive SMS (via Twilio) and email confirmation after successful registration.

• Claude Code calls the Excalidraw MCP tool behind the scenes, generates the element definitions, and renders the diagram inline in the chat.

• The diagram rendered by Claude Code is fully interactive. You can:
  • Click Open in Excalidraw to launch the full editor
  • Rearrange components, adjust colours, or update labels

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