AI Assistance is an optional panel that works alongside you on the canvas. It can answer questions about what is on the tab and tidy up an existing diagram, through two modes in one panel: Ask and Clean.
An optional feature
AI Assistance is off by default and only exists when the people running livediagram have configured an AI provider. Because livediagram is free and open source, anyone can self-host it, and AI is deliberately not required to do so. When no provider is configured, the feature is hidden entirely: there is no AI Tools category in Settings, no panel on the canvas, and nothing degraded to work around. Everything else in the editor behaves exactly the same.
Turning it on
Switch on AI Assistant. The panel appears straight away, docked at the top right of the canvas.
The panel is an ordinary corner panel: drag its header to move it, or collapse it to its title bar when you want the space back. To remove it, switch AI Assistant off again. The same category has a Suggested Prompts switch, which shows a row of one-click starter prompts under the mode buttons (on by default).
The panel is only shown to Editors (not to Participants or Viewers), and not while zen mode hides the chrome.
What it can do
The assistant always works against the active tab only. Other tabs are never sent to it, so each tab is its own clean context.
- Ask answers questions about the diagram without changing anything.
- Clean tidies an existing diagram: fixing label typos and normalising sizes, positions, and styles.
If you have elements selected when you send a request, the assistant focuses on them while treating the rest of the tab as context, so connected arrows and neighbours stay coherent. The Context line above the prompt box tells you which it will use, for example "2 selected elements" or "14 elements (whole tab)". For a full walkthrough of each mode, see Ask and Clean.
The panel does not draw new diagrams from a description. For that, connect an AI tool you already use, such as Claude, to livediagram (this needs an account): the panel's Connect agent button opens the guide, Connect an AI Tool (MCP).
Working with the results
Clean applies its changes as a single step, so one Undo (⌘Z / Ctrl+Z) reverses the whole AI operation rather than unpicking it element by element. The result is ordinary elements you can edit freely afterwards. Ask never changes the diagram; it only answers.
Limits
- Prompts over 1,000 characters are refused, so keep each one short.
- The assistant works on tabs of up to 200 elements, and a request on a larger tab fails, whatever is selected. Move part of the diagram to its own tab to use it there.
- The panel remembers your last few exchanges on the tab so a follow-up question makes sense. Switching tabs starts a fresh conversation, and Clear context under the response forgets it sooner.
Keep Clean prompts focused on one thing at a time. "Even out the box sizes" gives cleaner results than a long list of unrelated tidy-ups, and it keeps each Undo meaningful.
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