lanshu-animated-architecture-diagram

This is a skill for coding agents that turns a JSON spec into a hand-drawn-style architecture diagram, the kind you see in polished technical explainers. Feed it a description of your system and it renders three things at once: an editable Excalidraw file, a static PNG, and an animated GIF with flowing connection lines. It runs locally with Pillow, no external API, no headless browser, and it's MIT licensed.

Setup is about as light as it gets. Python and Pillow, no GPU, no Docker, no keys. The AI half runs inside whatever agent you already use, Codex or Claude Code, so the skill itself adds nothing to your bill. It even does a frame-diff check to confirm the GIF actually animates, which is a small touch that shows the author cared.

Set your expectations to match the scope. This is a single-author micro-tool with one fixed layout preset and a narrow job: making one specific style of dark-canvas diagram look good. If that's the look you want for a blog post or docs, it's a fast way to get there. If you need flexible diagramming, Excalidraw itself, Mermaid, or D2 give you far more control. Use this when you want the animated explainer aesthetic without hand-placing every box, and nothing more.