Excalidraw - AI Productivity Tool

Overview

Excalidraw is an open-source virtual whiteboard and diagramming tool that emphasizes a hand-drawn, sketchy look for rapid ideation, wireframing, and teaching. It ships as a web app (https://excalidraw.com) and as an embeddable React component for apps that need an approachable drawing surface. Typical uses include UX wireframes, flowcharts, quick architecture sketches, teaching diagrams, and lightweight product planning. The project focuses on speed, simplicity, and interoperability: drawings are serializable as JSON (.excalidraw), can be exported to PNG or SVG, and support reusable libraries of shapes. Excalidraw also supports real-time collaboration features and optional end-to-end encryption for shared sessions. Because it’s MIT-licensed and actively developed, teams can self-host the web app or embed the component into custom web applications.

GitHub Statistics

• Stars: 114,065
• Forks: 12,084
• Contributors: 335
• License: MIT
• Primary Language: TypeScript
• Last Updated: 2026-01-07T11:55:33Z
• Latest Release: v0.18.0

According to the GitHub repository, Excalidraw is a high-profile open-source project with 114,065 stars, 12,084 forks, and 335 contributors, licensed under MIT. The repo shows active maintenance (last commit on 2026-01-07), indicating ongoing development and community contributions. These metrics and contributor count point to a mature project with broad adoption, healthy community engagement, and continuing updates.

Installation

Install via npm:

npm install @excalidraw/excalidraw

yarn add @excalidraw/excalidraw

Key Features

• Hand-drawn style shapes and handwriting-like strokes for casual, readable diagrams
• Embeddable React component for integrating the editor into web applications
• Export drawings as PNG, SVG, or save/load scene JSON (.excalidraw)
• Real-time collaboration with shared boards for multiple simultaneous editors
• Optional end-to-end encryption for collaborative sessions and shared files
• Custom libraries: save and reuse shape collections across drawings
• Local autosave and the ability to import/export files for offline workflows

Community

Excalidraw has an active, large community—over 114k GitHub stars and 335 contributors—reflected in frequent commits and forks. Users and contributors discuss features and issues via GitHub, and community-run channels (Discord/Discussions) host tutorials, integrations, and third-party tools. Community feedback commonly praises Excalidraw’s speed, simplicity, and sketch aesthetic; contributions range from bug fixes to integrations and localization.

Key Information

• Category: Productivity
• Type: AI Productivity Tool