Jarbobo

jarbobo lets Claude (or any MCP client) draw real, interactive diagrams inside your editor — not ASCII art, not a mermaid string it hallucinated half the syntax for, not a PNG in another tab.

Graphs, UML sequence diagrams, and class diagrams that live in Cursor as first-class tabs, where every node is a live pointer into your code: hover it for the gist, click it and your editor jumps to the exact file:line.

jarbobo demo — click to watch the full video

Above: exploring pybind11's internals — click the image to watch the full demo (0:14). The diagram was drawn by Claude via MCP; clicking struct internals focuses internals.h:302 in the editor.

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Why this exists

LLMs are great at explaining systems and terrible at showing them. Markdown gives them bullet points; mermaid gives them a syntax to typo. jarbobo gives them a canvas with an interactivity contract:

The LLM sets…	You get…
tooltip	hover text on any node, edge, message, or class
detail	click → side panel with the full explanation (lockable 🔒, click-outside to close)
file + line	click → your editor opens that source line (⌘-click skips the detail panel and jumps straight there; hold ⌃ while hovering to highlight the reference)
refs	an ordered list of code references per element — the click panel shows each one's actual code, syntax-highlighted from disk; opening one highlights its line ranges in the editor (disjoint ranges welcome: a signature + the interesting call site)
href	click → docs / PR / dashboard

Plus the viewer mechanics you'd expect from a real tool:

• 🗂 one tab per diagram — compare views side by side, tear a tab out into its own window
• 🔍 pan & zoom — right-drag pans, scroll pans, ⇧-scroll pans horizontally, ⌘-scroll zooms
• 🧲 persistent layouts — drag nodes around; the arrangement survives close & reopen
• 🎯 ref-target toggle — open clicked references in the main code window or next to the diagram
• 📊 status bar — jarbobo: idle / jarbobo: 3 diagrams, click for history

The three tools

• draw_graph — architecture, dataflow, call graphs, state machines. Layered/force/grid/circle layouts, shapes (box, ellipse, diamond, hexagon, cylinder), labelled group containers for boundaries ("CPython interpreter" vs "your .so"), styled edges (solid/dashed/dotted, colors).
• draw_sequence_diagram — UML sequence: box/actor/database participants, sync/async/reply/self messages with automatic activation bars, side notes, and loop / alt / opt / par frames.
• draw_class_diagram — UML classes: «stereotypes», attributes & methods with + - # ~ visibility, and honest UML relations — inheritance ▷, implements ⇢▷, composition ◆, aggregation ◇, association, dependency ⇢ — with cardinality labels.
• draw_swimlane_diagram — cross-functional flows: steps divided into lanes by owner (service, team, thread), horizontal or vertical, with automatic step ordering from the edges; box/diamond/ellipse steps and styled cross-lane edges.
• draw_timeline — milestones ◆ and phase spans ▬ on a categorical ordered axis (dates, versions, quarters — anything), with optional labelled tracks: release histories, migration plans, roadmaps, incident timelines.
• list_diagrams / open_diagram — enumerate saved diagrams and re-display any version of one (also returns its spec, so the LLM can roll back or build on it).

Edits are versioned. Every draw call without an id creates a new diagram (new tab) and returns its id; passing the id back edits it — the content saves as the next version and the existing tab updates in place. A version picker in the panel's titlebar lets you flip back to any older version; nothing is ever overwritten.

Validation is strict (unknown node ids, bad frame ranges → the tool call fails with a fixable message), so the LLM can't silently draw a broken picture.

Code references are required by default. A draw call is rejected when primary elements (graph nodes, sequence messages, classes, swimlane steps, timeline items) carry neither a file+line reference nor an explicit noRef: true opt-out — the rejection message tells the LLM exactly which elements to fix, so it corrects itself in one round trip. Using jarbobo for non-coding diagrams? Turn the check off:

// ~/.jarbobo/config.json
{ "requireCodeReferences": false }

Quick start

git clone [email protected]:tch1001/jarbobo.git && cd jarbobo
npm install && npm run compile && npm run vendor
npx vsce package --allow-missing-repository
cursor --install-extension jarbobo-0.1.0.vsix     # or: code --install-extension …

Stock VS Code 1.101+: that's it — the extension self-registers its bundled MCP server via vscode.lm.registerMcpServerDefinitionProvider, running on the editor's own Node (process.execPath), so there's nothing else to configure.

Cursor doesn't implement that registration API yet (tracked on the Cursor forum), so register the server by hand:

// ~/.cursor/mcp.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jarbobo": { "command": "node", "args": ["<abs-path>/jarbobo/out/mcp-server.js"] }
  }
}

# Claude Code — same manual step, any client that lacks the registration API
claude mcp add --scope user jarbobo node <abs-path>/jarbobo/out/mcp-server.js

Reload the editor once, then ask your agent something like “draw a sequence diagram of what happens on import, and link every step to the source.”

Architecture

Two processes, one localhost bridge — so any number of MCP clients draw into the same editor:

Claude (Cursor agent / Claude Code / …)
   │  stdio MCP: draw_graph / draw_sequence_diagram / draw_class_diagram
   ▼
mcp-server.js        validates (zod) → saves ~/.jarbobo/diagrams/*.json
   │  POST /diagram  (port discovered via ~/.jarbobo/port.json)
   ▼
extension host       one webview tab per diagram · status bar · persists layouts
   ▼
webview              cytoscape (graphs) · hand-rolled SVG (sequence / UML)
   │  click node with file:line
   ▼
your editor          reveals the line, respecting locked editor groups

Panel cheat-sheet

Action	How
pan	right-drag, or scroll / ⇧-scroll
zoom	⌘-scroll (around cursor)
reset pan/zoom	reset view button
recompute layout (discard drags)	reset layout button
pin the detail panel	🔓 → 🔒 next to ✕ (click outside closes it when unlocked)
open a code ref directly (skip panel)	⌘-click the element
highlight a code ref while hovering	hold ⌃ Ctrl
choose where refs open	refs → code window / this window toggle
rearrange	drag nodes (graphs) or class boxes — layout persists
switch diagram version	v3 ▾ picker in the titlebar (edits bump the version; old ones stay)
reopen anything	status bar item, or Jarbobo: Open Recent Diagram

Dev

media/dev.html is a standalone harness (serve media/ and open dev.html#graph|sequence|class). node scripts/test-mcp.mjs smoke-tests the MCP server over stdio. curl 127.0.0.1:$(jq .port ~/.jarbobo/port.json)/health checks the bridge.

MIT.