Everything the livediagram editor does, it does by calling a REST API. That API is open to you too: with an API token your own scripts and integrations can read, create, and update documents, tabs, folders, images, themes and more, exactly as the app does. Account administration (teams, tokens, deleting the account) stays with the signed-in app.
If you want to connect an AI assistant rather than write code, you usually want the MCP server instead. It wraps this API in tools Claude and other MCP clients can call directly. To work from a terminal or a coding agent without writing requests yourself, use the livediagram CLI.
The base URL
The API lives under /api on your livediagram host. On the hosted service that is:
https://livediagram.app/api
On a self-hosted instance it is /api on your own domain. Every path in these docs is relative to that base, so GET /documents means GET https://livediagram.app/api/documents.
Authenticating in one line
Send an API token as a bearer header on each request:
curl https://livediagram.app/api/documents \
-H "Authorization: Bearer lvd_your_token_here"
API tokens are a signed-in-only feature. Authentication covers how to create one and how token access compares to the guest path.
What you can do
The token-callable surface mirrors the app:
- Documents and tabs: list, read, create, rename, copy, and delete documents; read a tab as JSON, as a text view or as an SVG picture; change a tab with changesets, and revert one.
- Comments and Plan items: read, add, reply to and resolve comments, and read and change the items on a document's Plan boards.
- Folders: organise documents into folders, personal or in a team you belong to.
- Sheets and pages: read and change the cells of a document's Sheets, and write Illustrate pages and articles.
- Sharing: create, list, extend and revoke share links, and set or remove a share password.
- Trash: list what you can restore, restore it, or delete it for good.
- Images, themes and shape libraries: upload and reference images, and manage your saved custom themes and shape libraries.
Working with Documents walks through the common calls with copy-pasteable examples. Edit Operations Reference lists the changeset vocabulary, Plan Items, Sheets and Images covers cards, cells, uploads and pages, and Comments and Presence for Agents shows how an agent talks to people and shows what it is doing.
The full reference
The complete, machine-readable description of every endpoint, request shape, and response shape is published as an OpenAPI 3.1 document, with no authentication required:
curl https://livediagram.app/api/openapi.json
Point Postman, an OpenAPI viewer, or a client generator at that URL to explore the whole surface or scaffold a client. Endpoints an external token can use are tagged x-token-usable.
The realtime collaboration WebSocket is not part of the REST reference. The OpenAPI document lists the upgrade endpoint, but the live message protocol is intentionally separate.
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