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Agent skill

Architecture Canvas

by yulonghe97 in yulonghe97/draw-architecture

Turn any system architecture into an interactive, pannable/zoomable canvas diagram (dark by default with a light switcher, JetBrains Mono, plane-coloured bands, click-to-isolate focus, PNG export) —…

MITAuto-check passedDevelopment

Install Architecture Canvas

skills CLI
$ npx skills add yulonghe97/draw-architecture --skill architecture-canvas -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install yulonghe97/draw-architecture architecture-canvas --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
architecture-canvas
GitHub stars
147
Token cost
~1.3k tokens
SKILL.md length
596 words
Files
19 (incl. scripts, references, assets)
Skills in repo
1
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Turn any system architecture into an interactive, pannable/zoomable canvas diagram (dark by default with a light switcher, JetBrains Mono, plane-coloured bands, click-to-isolate focus, PNG export) —…

  • Works in 4 steps: Understand the architecture first → Author the scene → Validate, then build → …
  • The user asks for an architecture diagram
  • SKILL.md covers Step 1 — Understand the…, Step 2 — Author the scene, Step 3 — Validate, then build and Step 4 — Publish to…, plus 1 more section
  • Runs JavaScript scripts from its folder; calls node

What it does

Architecture Canvas is an agent skill from yulonghe97/draw-architecture. Turn any system architecture into an interactive, pannable/zoomable canvas diagram (dark by default with a light switcher, JetBrains Mono, plane-coloured bands, click-to-isolate focus, PNG export) — the "architecture canvas" style — and optionally publish it to artifact.cafe for review. Use whenever the user asks for an architecture diagram, system overview, "canvas" of a codebase or platform, a visual map of services/layers/planes, or wants a diagram "in the architecture-canvas style" — whether the input is a…

Its SKILL.md is about 1.3k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 25 other files, including scripts, reference files and assets (for example `.github/workflows/publish.yml`, `README.md` and `bin/cli.js`).

It sits in Development, covering Diagrams. It works with JetBrains IDEs and Mermaid. The repository describes itself as: A skill to turn any system architecture into an interactive, explorable canvas diagram. The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • The user asks for an architecture diagram
  • System overview
  • Canvas of a codebase
  • A visual map of services/layers/planes

Example prompts

  • “architecture canvas”
  • “canvas”
  • “in the architecture-canvas style”
  • “/architecture-canvas”

Requirements

  • Node.js

Workflow steps

4 steps, taken from the step headings in SKILL.md.

  1. Understand the architecture first
  2. Author the scene
  3. Validate, then build
  4. Publish to artifact.cafe (when the user wants it shared)

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 0351ece. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    Ships 1 file in scripts/ (JavaScript, from the files we listed), which the agent can run.

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • node

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Architecture Canvas loads about 1.3k tokens when it runs, and up to ~4.2k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 181 tokens; SKILL.md has 596 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~181
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.3k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~4.2k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from yulonghe97/draw-architecture at commit 0351ece, republished under its MIT licence (© yulonghe97). 596 words, ~1,325 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/architecture-canvas/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 18 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
architecture-canvas
description
Turn any system architecture into an interactive, pannable/zoomable canvas diagram (dark by default with a light switcher, JetBrains Mono, plane-coloured bands, click-to-isolate focus, PNG export) — the "architecture canvas" style — and optionally publish it to artifact.cafe for review. Use whenever the user asks for an architecture diagram, system overview, "canvas" of a codebase or platform, a visual map of services/layers/planes, or wants a diagram "in the architecture-canvas style" — whether the input is a codebase to explore, an architecture doc, or a verbal description. Prefer this over hand-writing SVG/HTML diagrams or Mermaid when the result should be an explorable, publishable artifact.

Architecture Canvas

Produce an interactive architecture diagram as a single self-contained index.html: a canvas viewer where drag or two-finger scroll pans and pinch zooms, plus click-to-isolate focus with a readout panel, keyboard shortcuts, shareable view URLs, a dark/light switcher, and 2× PNG export. Ordinary vertical scrolling must never change the canvas scale. You never write viewer code — you author a scene (pure data: planes, bands, boxes, edges, labels) and the bundled scripts assemble and check it.

The pipeline:

understand the architecture → write scene.js → validate → build → (publish)

Step 1 — Understand the architecture first

The diagram is only as good as the analysis. Before any drawing, produce a short architecture brief (in your working notes, or shown to the user if they should confirm it):

  • Planes/layers (4–7), in causal top-to-bottom order — who acts, through what surface, on what abstractions, executed where. Name each plane and its one-line role.
  • Components (15–25 total): for each — its plane, whether it's an owned abstraction (dashed) or swappable infra / app surface (solid), 1–2 facts, and the one non-obvious thing about it (this becomes the italic footnote).
  • Flows (10–20 meaningful edges): the main pipeline, plus feedback loops and cross-cutting flows.
  • The thesis: a 3–5 word pipeline strapline (e.g. browse → price → order → fulfil → learn) and a one-sentence subtitle.

Where the architecture comes from depends on what you're given:

  • A codebase — explore it (package layout, entry points, deploy configs, existing docs/READMEs). Spawn an Explore agent for large repos.
  • An architecture doc — read it, but verify surprising claims against the code when both exist.
  • A description — use it as-is; ask only if the layering is genuinely ambiguous.

Step 2 — Author the scene

Read references/scene-format.md (data model, coordinate math, layout recipe) and skim examples/shoply-scene.js (the canonical example scene). Then write a scene.js next to your intended output defining the nine constants: W, H, PLANES, BANDS, BOXES, EDGES, TEXTS, SWATCHES, CHIPS.

Layout mechanically, top to bottom, using the recipe's numbers — title block at the top, ~5 bands (merge related planes into a neutral multi-column band rather than stacking 7 thin ones), generous boxes that fill their band's width, edges routed orthogonally with long feedback flows in the side gutters, footnotes at the bottom, then set H.

Write scene.js inside the artifact folder (next to the future index.html) so nothing strays outside the publishable directory, and write its comments about this architecture — don't carry over the example's Shoply-specific commentary.

Show full SKILL.md (209 more words)Show less

Step 3 — Validate, then build

bash
node <skill-dir>/scripts/validate.js scene.js

Fix every ERROR (dangling ids, boxes outside bands, overlaps, text overflow) and take WARNings seriously — they're usually real. Re-run until clean, then:

bash
node <skill-dir>/scripts/build.js --scene scene.js --out <slug>/index.html \
  --title "Acme — platform architecture" \
  --kicker "ACME — PLATFORM ARCHITECTURE" \
  --sub "<b>ingest</b> → <b>process</b> → <b>serve</b>" \
  --slug acme-architecture

--sub is the plate strapline (small HTML, <b> for the stage names). Output into its own folder with index.html at the root — that folder is the publishable artifact.

If browser tooling is available (Playwright MCP, open), load the file once and screenshot it — check nothing collides and the story reads top-to-bottom. Don't skip validation in favour of eyeballing; do both when you can.

Step 4 — Publish to artifact.cafe (when the user wants it shared)

If the user asked to publish/share/review the canvas, invoke the artifact-cafe skill and follow it — it handles login/workspace choice, --title/--notes, and returns the review URL. Point it at the folder containing index.html. If the user didn't ask, offer it as a follow-up instead of publishing unprompted.

Quality bar

  • Ownership semantics stay honest: dashed = owned abstraction, solid = swappable infra or app surface. This distinction is the diagram's argument.
  • Adjacent columns get well-separated hues; every plane colour comes from the recommended list in the reference.
  • Readout about text is written for a newcomer — one crisp sentence per box.
  • The diagram is an orientation map, not an inventory: fewer, better boxes.

© yulonghe97, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 18 other files (scripts, references, assets) in the repository root of yulonghe97/draw-architecture.

  • SKILL.md
  • .github/workflows/publish.yml
  • .gitignore
  • LICENSE
  • README.md
  • assets/template.html
  • bin/cli.js
  • docs/focus-mode.png
  • docs/meridian.png
  • docs/shoply.png
  • evals/evals.json
  • examples/shoply-canvas.html
  • examples/shoply-scene.js
  • package.json
  • … and 5 more

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 0351ece

Compare with similar skills

Architecture Canvas next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Architecture Canvas compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Architecture Canvas this skillyulonghe97/draw-architecture147—~1.3kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Archify Diagramstt-a1i/archify82k—~2.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Diagram Designcathrynlavery/diagram-design49k1 repos~7.6kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Draw.io Diagram StudioAgents365-ai/drawio-skill10k—~2.4kAutomated safety check: NotesMIT
Pretty Mermaid Rendererimxv/Pretty-mermaid-skills1.5k—~2kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Archify Diagram BuilderUnclecheng-li/AI_Animation1.5k2 repos~4.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Works with

Categories

Questions about Architecture Canvas

What does Architecture Canvas do?

Turn any system architecture into an interactive, pannable/zoomable canvas diagram (dark by default with a light switcher, JetBrains Mono, plane-coloured bands, click-to-isolate focus, PNG export) —…. Architecture Canvas is an agent skill from yulonghe97/draw-architecture.cafe for review.

When should I use Architecture Canvas?

Architecture Canvas fits situations like: the user asks for an architecture diagram; system overview; canvas of a codebase; A visual map of services/layers/planes.

How do I install Architecture Canvas in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add yulonghe97/draw-architecture --skill architecture-canvas -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (the yulonghe97/draw-architecture repository) into .claude/skills/architecture-canvas in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Architecture Canvas in Codex?

Run `npx skills add yulonghe97/draw-architecture --skill architecture-canvas -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (the yulonghe97/draw-architecture repository) into .agents/skills/architecture-canvas in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Architecture Canvas in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add yulonghe97/draw-architecture --skill architecture-canvas -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/architecture-canvas, .gemini/skills/architecture-canvas, .github/skills/architecture-canvas and .opencode/skills/architecture-canvas in your project.

What does Architecture Canvas need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Architecture Canvas needs JavaScript for the scripts in its folder and the command-line tools its instructions call (node). Our summary lists: Node.js.

Does Architecture Canvas access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Architecture Canvas safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.

What licence does Architecture Canvas use?

Architecture Canvas is published under the MIT licence (from the LICENSE file in the skill folder). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Architecture Canvas use?

About 1.3k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 5.3k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 2.9k tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Architecture Canvas?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Architecture Canvas: Archify Diagrams (tt-a1i/archify, 82k stars), Diagram Design (cathrynlavery/diagram-design, 49k stars), Draw.io Diagram Studio (Agents365-ai/drawio-skill, 10k stars) and Pretty Mermaid Renderer (imxv/Pretty-mermaid-skills, 1.5k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Architecture Canvas?

yulonghe97 (a GitHub user) maintains it in yulonghe97/draw-architecture, which has 147 GitHub stars. The repository was last updated on August 25, 2026.

Source: yulonghe97/draw-architecture on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.