kymo User Guide
Diagram superpowers — type it, see it appear, watch it animate.
kymo turns a small, line-oriented text language (.kymo) into clean, animated SVG diagrams — architecture diagrams, cloud reference designs, data flows, and BPMN processes — and can also export to Figma, Excalidraw, and WebP, or import standard BPMN 2.0 files. You write what to draw; kymo decides how and where.
This guide is the friendly, example-first companion to the formal DSL Language Specification. Start here if you want to draw a diagram; reach for the spec when you need the exact grammar.
Contents
| Guide | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Getting Started | Install kymo and render your first diagram in five minutes. |
The .kymo Language | A guided tour of every building block: components, regions, layout, edges, icons, and BPMN. |
| Cookbook | Complete, copy-pasteable diagrams for common patterns — cloud architecture, layered systems, and workflows. |
| FAQ & Troubleshooting | Fixes for the problems you'll hit in your first week. |
Try it without installing
The browser playground runs the whole engine client-side — type DSL on the left, see the SVG on the right, share via URL:
Where to go next
- DSL Language Specification — the normative grammar (EBNF), semantics, and conformance rules. The reference implementation is
packages/python/src/kymo/dsl.py. - BPMN element mapping (
BPMN-MAP-001) — how.bpmnfiles map to kymo shapes on import and export; part of the BPMN 2.0.2 normative-reference set. - Best-practice diagrams — design principles for diagrams that read well.
samples/— complete.kymoand.bpmnfiles, each with its rendered SVG.