Anytime Diagram

A genealogy diagram editor for VS Code. Open a *.diagram.json file and the chart is drawn from the families it declares; drag people onto the grid to adjust the layout and save it back into the same file.

What it does

• Automatic layout. Generations become columns, derived from the parent/child links. You only record families; the people are derived from them.
• Manual placement. In edit mode, people snap to grid cells — only the shaded cells accept a person, so a card can never land on top of another one.
• Multi-select. Shift/Ctrl-click (or the ☐ handle) selects several people; they then move together by the same number of cells, or not at all if one of them cannot fit.
• Rows and columns. The ＋ icons along the top and left insert an empty column or row; a − appears on lines with nobody in them.
• Box size. Drag the right edge, bottom edge or corner of the top-left card to resize every card.
• MCP server. The bundled mcp-diagram server exposes read_diagram, write_diagram and set_diagram_layout so an agent can build and rearrange charts.

File format

One file holds the whole chart: title, lead, note, legend, the group axes, the families, the per-person annotations, and the layout overrides. Placements are stored as grid cell numbers, not pixels, so changing the card size never knocks a hand-placed person off the grid.

{
  "version": 1,
  "title": "Example",
  "lead": "",
  "note": "",
  "legend": "Solid lines are parentage.",
  "groups": [],
  "families": [
    { "parents": ["A", "B"], "children": ["C"], "kind": "birth", "groups": {} }
  ],
  "annotations": {},
  "layout": { "placements": { "C": { "column": 2, "row": 1 } } }
}

kind is one of birth (solid), creation (dotted) or oath (dashed). What each one means in your chart is up to the legend sentence.

Editing the people

The custom editor changes the layout only. Add or remove people and families by editing the JSON in a text editor, or through the write_diagram MCP tool.

License

MIT