Excalidraw Libraries

Excalidraw libraries are collections of reusable shapes, icons, and pre-built diagram components packaged as .excalidrawlib files. Instead of drawing every element from scratch, you can drag and drop premade components from a library directly onto your canvas.

Since Excalimate is built on Excalidraw, all Excalidraw libraries are fully compatible — you can use any existing library in your Excalimate projects.

The official Excalidraw library collection is the best place to start:

• libraries.excalidraw.com — The official directory with hundreds of community-created libraries
• GitHub — Many open-source projects include custom Excalidraw libraries for their specific domain
• Community forums — Excalidraw's Discord and Reddit communities share libraries regularly

Here are some of the most popular and useful libraries available:

• Flowchart Shapes — Decision diamonds, process boxes, terminators, and connectors for standard flowcharts
• UI Wireframes — Buttons, inputs, cards, navbars, and other UI components for mockups
• AWS Architecture Icons — EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, VPC, and other AWS service icons in the hand-drawn style
• Cloud Architecture — Generic cloud infrastructure icons for provider-agnostic diagrams
• Network Diagrams — Routers, switches, firewalls, servers, and network topology icons
• UML — Class diagram boxes, sequence diagram elements, and relationship arrows
• Kubernetes — Pods, services, deployments, nodes, and cluster components
• Database — Tables, schemas, relationships, and storage icons

Adding a library to Excalimate is straightforward:

• From the web — Click the "Add to Excalidraw" button on libraries.excalidraw.com while Excalimate is open
• From a file — Drag and drop a .excalidrawlib file onto the Excalimate canvas
• Via the library panel — Open the library panel (book icon in the toolbar) and click "Browse libraries" or import a file

Once installed, library elements appear in the library panel. Drag any component onto the canvas to use it.

When using the MCP server, your AI assistant can reference library components in its creations. The AI can also build diagrams that match the style of library elements:

// Using the MCP server, ask your AI assistant:
"Import the AWS architecture icons library
 and create a diagram showing an ALB routing
 to three EC2 instances behind a VPC."

The AI will create elements styled to match common library conventions, making it easy to combine AI-generated elements with library components.

You can create custom libraries from your own elements for reuse across projects:

// To create a reusable library:
// 1. Select the elements you want to save
// 2. Export as .excalidrawlib file
// 3. Share or import into other projects

// Library files are JSON arrays of element groups:
[
  {
    "status": "published",
    "elements": [ /* Excalidraw elements */ ],
    "name": "My Custom Component"
  }
]

• Select elements — Choose the shapes you want to save as a library item
• Add to library — Right-click and select "Add to library" or use the library panel
• Export — Export your library as a .excalidrawlib file to share with others

• Group before saving — Group related elements together before adding them to your library so they stay as a single unit
• Consistent sizing — Keep library elements at a standard size so they work well together on the canvas
• Combine with custom shapes — Library icons work great as starting points — customize colors, sizes, and labels to fit your diagram
• Animate library elements — Once on the canvas, library elements can be animated just like any other element in Excalimate