Sketchy v0.1.8: open-source MCP server draws clickable codebase diagrams, compact format beats plain text on cost
Nkgsporty · reddit · 2026-11-04
A developer released Sketchy v0.1.8, a free MIT-licensed MCP server that turns a coding assistant's explanation of a repo into an interactive hand-drawn-style diagram.
Key features
- Install via npm and connect as an MCP server in Cursor; just ask the agent to "draw the request flow for this endpoint, including failure paths"
- Click a linked node to jump straight to the source file in your editor
- Freehand annotation on the canvas and export to Excalidraw
- The model outputs nodes/edges/groups/steps; Sketchy handles layout with ELK and renders via Rough.js, using zero model tokens for layout
Cost benchmark: in an empty Claude Code project, six identical questions averaged over two runs cost $0.61 cumulative with plain text, $0.75 with Sketchy JSON, but only $0.58 with the compact format—3 cents cheaper than plain text by round six.
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