There's been a lot of buzz around MCP as to how it enables us to integrate Gen AI with
every other tool out there.
So when the MCP server for this thing called Excalidraw came out a few weeks ago, it made
me interested in seeing how I can integrate and try it out actually with Excalidraw.
So I use Excalidraw as a tool to create these graphic illustrations that go into my blog.
And currently, the way I build these illustrations is by going to Excalidraw.com and then actually,
you know, creating these illustrations like so and so as to what I want to do.
With the MCP server available, what I wanted to check was, can I provide instructions to
GEN.AI to build an illustration and then the GEN.AI would, you know, create it for me and
I'd see it on Excalidraw.
So let's see how that kind of went.
So here's an instruction I provided to GEN.AI.
Can you create an Excalidraw drawing of a Mickey Mouse?
The Mickey Mouse should be holding a stopwatch in their hand and looking at the stopwatch.
It should have an expression of being worried looking at the stopwatch.
With this instruction, GEN.AI went ahead and created an Excalidraw diagram because
of the MCP server, it was able to save this into an Excalidraw format file.
I'll just go ahead and show what it kind of created that I could like load on Excalidraw
to just have a look at.
So this is what came out of that single prompt.
There's a kind of pretty rudimentary Mickey Mouse with a hand here, if you may call it
that and a kind of stopwatch.
So obviously this is not very usable, you know, very, very basic kind of thing.
So what I thought is what if I provide a Mickey Mouse image as an input?
So I got hold of a Mickey Mouse image from internet and I said using this attached image
of an inquisitive Mickey Mouse as a reference point, can you create an Excalidraw sketch
of a Mickey Mouse looking curious and inquisitive?
Store your changes in Mickey Mouse so-and-so Excalidraw file so that I can like look at
that file.
And just with the single prompt, it created something and saved it.
Let's see what that looked like.
So this is the Mickey Mouse it created.
So I actually picked the colors from the image that I shared, but again, the illustration
is pretty rudimentary right next to like pretty non-usable.
And at that point, I thought maybe I can't use it to create new illustrations.
But what if I want it to modify an existing one?
So I got hold of the Excalidraw file for this particular illustration and I asked it to
make some modifications.
So I gave it the Excalidraw file, the source file, and I said this is the Excalidraw illustration
showing someone worried looking at all the icons.
Can we make them smile instead of having them looking worried?
I need the output to be stored in an Excalidraw file.
So with that single instruction, let's get back to it saved a file and I'll load that
file to have a look at it.
This is what kind of came out of it.
Just for reference, this was the original image.
So it changed the worried look to a kind of smiling look, but it kind of got rest of the
elements from the image lost.
I'm not sure if I would have given better prompt, more detail about not touching anything
else, how that would have gone.
But this is what kind of came out of it.
So from this experience, a couple of points.
One is am I going to use GenAI for these sort of illustrations as of now?
Absolutely no.
I think I'll have to provide a lot of inputs for it to get these things right.
I may be faster building those myself like I kind of already do.
But more important point is with the MCP server coming in, there's no change on the Excalidraw
that the Excalidraw team has done.
But it has simply allowed me to integrate GenAI into this thing.
Well, this is very subjective, you know, building illustrations.
But what about integrating GenAI with maybe sending Slack alerts, email or pulling off
data from certain sheet or saving it into a chart in another tool?
Even without those tools not making any changes or modifications with the availability of
MCP server for these kind of other products, GenAI would directly kind of fit in so that
potential definitely looks very promising and worth exploring a lot more.