An AI diagram generator, built right in.

Setup

Open Chalk's Settings → AI Integration. Pick your client, click Add, and the integration is wired up in one click — no editing JSON files, no quitting and relaunching.

For clients we don't have one-click support for, the same panel shows a copy-paste config snippet pointing at the bundled binary.

What to ask

Chalk doesn't need you to specify shapes or coordinates. Describe the diagram in plain English and Claude figures out the topology, edges, and labels. Mentioning the diagram type (flowchart, sequence, mind map, tree, class diagram) helps it pick the right tool.

Flowcharts

Decision trees, process flows, data pipelines. Auto-laid-out by dagre.

• Use Chalk to draw a flowchart of our user signup flow. Include validation, email confirmation, and the bounce case.
• Sketch the data pipeline for our search service — ingest → parse → index → query — as a flowchart, top-to-bottom.
• Create a flowchart showing the lifecycle of a Stripe payment, with branches for succeeded, failed, and disputed.

Wireframes

Low-fidelity UI layouts — boxes for header, sidebar, content, and buttons — built shape by shape.

• Sketch a wireframe for a dashboard: top nav bar, left sidebar with 4 nav items, main content area with 3 stat cards and a table below.
• Wireframe a mobile login screen — logo, email field, password field, primary button, and a "forgot password" link.
• Lay out a settings page wireframe: left-hand tab list (Profile, Billing, Team, Notifications) and a form panel on the right.

Sequence diagrams

Actors at top, messages between lifelines. Solid arrows for requests, dashed for responses.

• Use Chalk to add an OAuth authorization-code flow as a sequence diagram. Keep it high-level — User, Browser, Auth Server, Resource Server.
• Create a sequence diagram showing how a Stripe webhook flows through our system and updates the order record.
• Make a sequence diagram for our login flow with magic links.

Mind maps

Central topic with branches radiating outward. Good for brainstorming and topic decomposition.

• Make a mind map of the topics for our next design review. Center node 'Q3 Review', branches for Auth, Search, Billing, and Onboarding.
• Sketch the failure modes of our deployment pipeline as a mind map.
• Brainstorm a mind map of side-project ideas for a long weekend.

Trees

Strict hierarchies. Org charts, taxonomies, file trees, decision trees.

• Draw our team org chart as a tree. CEO at top, then Eng / Design / Sales, with reports under each.
• Create a folder structure tree for a new Astro project.
• Sketch a decision tree for "should I deploy on Friday?" with leaf nodes for yes/no outcomes.

Class & ER diagrams

Multi-row boxes (name / attributes / methods) with typed relationships.

• Make a class diagram for User, Account, and Subscription. User has many Accounts; Account has one Subscription.
• Draw an ER diagram for a blog: Post, Tag, Author, Comment.
• Class diagram for an event sourcing model — Aggregate, Event, EventStore, Projection.

Custom & free-form diagrams

Anything that doesn't fit the five templates above — hub-and-spoke layouts, architecture diagrams, whatever shape the idea actually has.

• Draw an architecture diagram: a host app, a runtime, three trust tiers, and the shared SDK contract they all depend on.
• Sketch a hub-and-spoke diagram — a central "AI Hub" node connected to Database, Analytics, Trigger, and Share.
• Lay out our microservices with the API gateway in the middle and each service as a satellite around it.

Icons & images

Drop in a bundled line icon or embed a real image from disk — logos, screenshots, photos.

• Add a database icon above the "Users Table" box and a lightning-bolt icon above "Trigger".
• Embed ~/Desktop/logo.png in the top-left corner of the architecture diagram.
• Give the Hub node a violet sparkle icon and the Share node a green share icon.

Iterating on an existing diagram

Once a diagram is on disk Claude can read it back, add pieces, and tweak.

• Add a 'Forgot password' branch to the signup flowchart I just made.
• Add a sticky note next to the Database in oauth-flow explaining the partition scheme.
• In the search-pipeline diagram, move the parser box below ingest and re-layout.
• Show me everything in my architecture folder, then summarize what oauth-flow contains.

Tips

• New diagrams always land in your Boards folder for now — Free-tier Chalk only shows a user's first top-level folder, so the AI can't be told to write anywhere else yet.
• Close the file in Chalk before asking AI to edit it. Otherwise Chalk's autosave can race with the MCP write.
• For dense diagrams, ask "keep it high level" or "max 6 nodes" — Claude will summarize.
• If the auto-layout looks rough, ask for chalk_relayout — it re-runs the original layout from the spec stored in the file.
• Manual edits stick: if you move a shape by hand, it stays where you put it. chalk_relayout is the one exception.
• New shapes fill (or don't) according to your Settings → Shapes preference — Claude doesn't need to be told.
• For a diagram that doesn't fit a flowchart, mind map, tree, sequence, or class diagram, just describe the layout — Claude builds it shape by shape and can self-check the result for overlaps before showing you.

Tool reference

20 tools, grouped by what they do. You don't call these directly — Claude picks the right one based on your prompt.