@mmds/excalidraw

Converts MMDS JSON (mmdflux's intermediate format) into Excalidraw .excalidraw files. Nodes become rectangles, diamonds, or ellipses; edges become polyline arrows with labels. Subgraph membership is preserved as Excalidraw groups.

Install

npm install -g @mmds/excalidraw

Or use directly with npx (no install needed):

mmdflux --format mmds diagram.mmd | npx @mmds/excalidraw > out.excalidraw

Usage

Pipe MMDS JSON from mmdflux into the adapter:

# Layout-level (straight center-to-center arrows)
mmdflux --format mmds diagram.mmd | npx mmds-to-excalidraw > out.excalidraw

# Routed-level (polyline edge paths from mmdflux's router)
mmdflux --format mmds --geometry-level routed diagram.mmd | npx mmds-to-excalidraw > out.excalidraw

Options

| Flag | Short | Values | Default | Description | |------|-------|--------|---------|-------------| | --output | -o | json, url | json | Output format — Excalidraw JSON or a shareable excalidraw.com URL | | --open | | | false | Upload and open the diagram in your browser |

# Get a shareable URL instead of JSON
mmdflux --format mmds --geometry-level routed diagram.mmd | npx mmds-to-excalidraw -o url

# Open directly in browser (also prints JSON to stdout)
mmdflux --format mmds --geometry-level routed diagram.mmd | npx mmds-to-excalidraw --open

# Open in browser, only print the URL
mmdflux --format mmds --geometry-level routed diagram.mmd | npx mmds-to-excalidraw -o url --open

Open the resulting .excalidraw file in excalidraw.com or the Excalidraw VS Code extension.

Geometry levels

• layout (default) — node positions and sizes only; edges are drawn as straight lines between node centers.
• routed — includes full edge paths with waypoints, producing right-angle polyline arrows that match mmdflux's text output.

Scale

Node and edge coordinates are scaled from dagre layout units to pixel space. The default scale factor is 3. Override it with the SCALE environment variable:

mmdflux --format mmds diagram.mmd | SCALE=5 npx mmds-to-excalidraw > out.excalidraw

How it works

1. Reads MMDS JSON from stdin
2. Maps MMDS node shapes to Excalidraw types (rectangle, diamond, ellipse) with text-aware sizing
3. Converts edges to Excalidraw arrows, snapping endpoints to node boundaries
4. Computes viewport zoom/scroll to fit the diagram
5. Writes a complete .excalidraw JSON document to stdout (or uploads to excalidraw.com with --output url / --open)