What is Excalinest?

A spatial canvas for software engineering notes with collapsible, nested nodes. Local-only, backed by SQLite.

Excalidraw is great for drawing but lacks collapsible hierarchy — grouping concepts under a parent, collapsing to hide detail, expanding to drill in. Excalinest adds that.

Architecture

Three npm workspaces: server/, client/, mcp-server/.

Quick start

npm install
npm run dev    # starts server (:3001) + client (:5173)

MCP setup

Build first: npm run build --workspace=mcp-server

Add to your Claude Code or Claude Desktop MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "knowledge-canvas": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/mcp-server/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Tools: get_canvas, search_nodes, create_node, create_nodes, update_node, delete_node, create_edge, delete_edge, find_empty_space, get_color_palette

Keyboard shortcuts

H pan | V select | Cmd+C/V copy/paste | Delete remove