Make your AI coding assistant truly understand yFiles

yFiles MCP Server

Benefits of using the yFiles mcp-server

• Accurate and up-to-date information about the yFiles for HTML SDK
• Scaffolding new yFiles applications
• Code suggestions that follow best practices
• Easing the learning curve of the yFiles SDK
• Works with many popular AI agents via the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Use cases

With the yFiles mcp-server, your AI assistant doesn’t just explain how things work — it can directly implement features, scaffold projects, and answer API questions with real code. This lowers the learning curve for newcomers and speeds up everyday development for experienced users alike.

Getting started as a yFiles newcomer

yFiles for HTML provides outstanding documentation and more than 300 demos that illustrate almost every feature and scenario. These are invaluable learning and reference resources.

For newcomers, however, combining multiple concepts from the documentation into a working first project can feel overwhelming. The yFiles mcp-server lowers this barrier by letting your AI agent set up a functioning project directly, so you can see results right away and learn by example. Of course, this is typically not a single prompt, but rather a sequence of prompts where each one adds and combines more features.

Example prompt

Scaffolding new yFiles applications

When you’re ready to start fresh or try out new ideas, the yFiles mcp-server can scaffold a project for you. It generates the boilerplate, initializes the GraphComponentAPI, wires up interactions, and embeds common patterns—saving time on repetitive setup tasks so you can focus on your actual goals.

Example prompts for scaffolding

Accelerating development in your existing projects

Once your application is up and running, the real work begins: extending features, customizing styles, refining layouts, and improving performance. With its rich API, yFiles gives you full control over all of these aspects — but finding the right combination of classes, methods, and demos can sometimes be time-consuming.

The yFiles mcp-server, when paired with your AI agent, helps you move faster by implementing concrete code changes directly in your project context. Instead of spending time searching for the right demo or piecing things together manually, you can simply describe what you want to achieve, and your AI assistant generates the necessary code using the official yFiles APIs and best practices.

This dramatically speeds up iterative development, helps you avoid common mistakes, and shortens the time from idea to working feature.

Example prompts for existing projects

Answering yFiles API questions

The yFiles for HTML SDK is vast and powerful, offering hundreds of classes, interfaces, and specialized layout and visualization features. Even experienced developers can’t (and shouldn’t) memorize the entire API surface. Traditionally, when a question arises, you’d search through the documentation or look for the right demo — both excellent resources, but sometimes too slow when you’re in the middle of coding.

With the yFiles mcp-server, your AI agent can directly answer API questions and implement code solutions immediately in your development environment. Instead of switching contexts to look up a class or an event, you simply ask: “How do I attach a listener for label clicks?” or “Which layout should I use for layered data?” — and your assistant can show you, explain it, and inject working code into your project.

This turns your AI agent into an interactive API companion: one that’s always up-to-date, understands the entire yFiles SDK, and lowers the learning curve by translating abstract concepts into concrete, ready-to-use code.

How to get started

The yFiles mcp-server comes as part of the yFiles Dev Suite a development hub for working with yFiles. Aside from the MCP server, it helps you set up the SDK, explore the demos and documentation and also create stand-alone project from existing demos.

To make an AI agent aware of the yFiles mcp-server, you need to configure the MCP server in your AI agent's configuration. It can be started through the CLI:

npx --yes yfiles-dev-suite --mcp

"yfiles-mcp": {
  "command": "npx",
  "args": [
    "--yes",
    "yfiles-dev-suite",
    "--mcp"
  ],
  "transportType": "stdio"
}

This configuration enables your AI agent to communicate with yfiles-mcp, providing access to specialized tools and knowledge for yFiles development.

Recap

yFiles MCP Server

The yFiles MCP server equips your AI coding assistant with up-to-date and reliable knowledge of the yFiles for HTML SDK, enabling it to deliver accurate code suggestions and use cases. By leveraging the Model Context Protocol (MCP), it integrates seamlessly with popular AI agents to streamline tasks such as project scaffolding, feature implementation, API question answering, and many other use cases. The getting started guide explains how to connect and configure the MCP server with your AI agent for a smooth setup. These capabilities help both newcomers and experts efficiently build, customize, and maintain yFiles-based applications.

Related content

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

yFiles Dev Suite

yFiles for HTML

Got questions about
yFiles MCP Server?

Nicholas Brich

Senior Software Developer

Email: hello@yworks.com
Phone: +49 7071 9709050

Get in touch