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Athena can draw diagrams in draw.io format: flowcharts, sequence and entity-relationship diagrams from Mermaid, and architecture, network, swimlane or process diagrams with draw.io’s shape libraries, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud icons. Each diagram appears in the chat with a preview, and you can open it in draw.io to keep editing or download it as a .drawio file.
draw.io needs no account and no credentials. On Athena’s managed cloud it is available to every workspace as a built-in MCP server; you turn it on in the chats where you want it. On a private cloud or VPC deployment it is off until your Athena administrator enables it; see “Where draw.io runs” below.

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Turn on draw.io in a chat

1

Open MCP Servers

In the chat composer, open the overflow menu and choose MCP Servers.
2

Turn on draw.io

Under Workspace MCP Servers, find draw.io and turn it on. Use Test Setup to check the connection and see its tools.
3

Apply it to the chat

Choose Apply to this chat. The change applies to the current chat; to keep draw.io after a refresh, save the server as a Toolkit.
4

Ask for a diagram

Ask Athena for the diagram you need, for example “Draw our order-to-cash process as a flowchart” or “Diagram this AWS architecture with the official icons”. It picks Mermaid or draw.io XML, draws the diagram, and shows it in the chat.
To limit which draw.io tools Athena may call, use Tool access in the server’s settings: Allow lists the tools it may use, Block the ones it may not.

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What Athena can do

A few behaviors to know:
  • Preview: a draw.io XML diagram is previewed in draw.io’s read-only viewer, which also loads any images the diagram links to; a Mermaid diagram is previewed the same way other Mermaid diagrams appear in Athena’s chat.
  • Open in draw.io opens the diagram in the draw.io editor in a new tab, where you can edit it and save it wherever you keep draw.io files.
  • Download .drawio saves a draw.io XML diagram as a file that draw.io and draw.io Desktop open. Mermaid diagrams are converted to draw.io when you open them in draw.io.
  • Very large diagrams skip the inline preview; open or download them instead.
  • The tools only draw. They do not read or change anything in your workspace, and diagrams are not saved as Athena assets.

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Where draw.io runs

draw.io’s tools come from draw.io’s own server, maintained by JGraph, the company behind draw.io.
  • Athena’s managed cloud uses JGraph’s hosted server. When Athena draws a diagram, the diagram’s text (the Mermaid or draw.io XML that Athena wrote from your conversation) is sent to that server to be drawn. JGraph states that its server does not keep diagram content in its logs by default.
  • Private cloud and VPC deployments have draw.io off by default. Your Athena administrator can turn it on by running draw.io’s server inside your environment, so the drawing itself happens there.
Either way, the preview and Open in draw.io load draw.io’s web app from diagrams.net in your browser. The diagram travels in the part of the link that browsers do not send to draw.io’s servers. Only chats where draw.io is turned on can use it. Keep that in mind before asking Athena to diagram confidential material. Workspace owners can also turn off MCP tools for the whole workspace, or limit them to certain roles, in Tool Registry.

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Troubleshooting

  • MCP servers: how Athena agents use MCP servers and which ones are built in.