AI Console and MCP

The AI Console

The AI Console is a chat panel inside SVG Editor. Open it from the ✨ AI button next to the 💬 Feedback button (bottom-left), or from the Window menu. Type what you want in plain language; the answer is applied to the document in front of you and every change is undoable.

Ask for a single shape ("a red hexagon with a soft shadow") or restyle a whole document ("make everything pastel and rounded"). The result is real, layer-aware vectors — not a bitmap — so you keep editing with the Pen, Pathfinder and palettes as usual.

Choose the assistant

Settings ▸ AI:

• Built-in — the default. No key or account needed.
• Claude (own key) — paste your own Anthropic API key.
• OpenAI (own key) — paste your own OpenAI API key.
• Gemini (own key) — paste your own Google AI key.

With your own key you can also edit the Base prompt, the standing instructions sent with every request — house style, default colours, language, anything you always want applied.

Turn MCP on

1. Install SVG Editor from the Mac App Store and open it once.
2. Open Settings ▸ MCP Server and turn on Allow external control (MCP / AppleScript).
3. In the Client tab pick your client (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, VS Code, Codex, Antigravity); the Configuration tab shows the ready-to-paste config with the correct path to the app.
4. The first time a client drives the app, macOS may ask to allow Automation — accept it (if you refuse, re-enable it in System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Automation).

The configuration shown below assumes the app is in /Applications.

Claude Code

Run once in a terminal (add --scope user to make it available in every project), or paste the configuration below into .mcp.json in the project folder.

claude mcp add svgeditor -- "/Applications/SVG Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/SVG Editor" --mcp-stdio

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "svgeditor": {
      "command": "/Applications/SVG Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/SVG Editor",
      "args": ["--mcp-stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Then, in a Claude Code session, ask for something and watch SVG Editor: "open the front document and list what's in it", "add a title in the top-left corner". Claude Code launches SVG Editor if it is not running.

Claude Desktop

Add the same mcpServers block to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json and restart Claude Desktop. The SVG Editor tools appear in the tools menu of every chat.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "svgeditor": {
      "command": "/Applications/SVG Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/SVG Editor",
      "args": ["--mcp-stdio"]
    }
  }
}

VS Code and Antigravity

VS Code: add to .vscode/mcp.json in the workspace, or to the user-level file opened by the MCP: Open User Configuration command. Antigravity: paste the mcpServers block above into its MCP configuration file (Settings ▸ MCP Servers ▸ edit the configuration).

{
  "servers": {
    "svgeditor": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "/Applications/SVG Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/SVG Editor",
      "args": ["--mcp-stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Codex

Add to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.svgeditor]
command = "/Applications/SVG Editor.app/Contents/MacOS/SVG Editor"
args = ["--mcp-stdio"]

Draw and edit in the open document

Once connected, your assistant works in the document in front of you: it can create shapes, paths and text, select and arrange objects, change fills, strokes, gradients and patterns, apply effects, combine paths, manage layers, symbols and guides, and export a PNG. If no document is open, one is created. Every change is undoable.

AppleScript and Illustrator scripts

The same switch enables AppleScript control, and the AI Script Console runs Illustrator-compatible scripts unchanged.