Opentikz

Describe your figure. Get it, paper-ready.

More than an AI-agent skill for LaTeX TikZ figures.

Website · Browse · Templates · Icons · Examples · Quick start · Contributing

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OpenTikZ is the "Flaticon for academic TikZ" — conceptual/overview figures (system block diagrams, neural-network architectures, pipelines, flowcharts) for your papers, made fast. Four ways to use it:

• Use icons — grab a single icon, no AI needed: copy its .tex (or download SVG/PNG) and \input it.
• Edit a template — tell the agent the change; it edits the template and verifies it compiles.
• PNG → TikZ — hand the agent a figure image; get editable TikZ back.
• Describe → TikZ — describe a figure in words; the agent drafts it from the library.

Quick start

Use it with your AI agent (recommended). Install the Claude Code plugin — run these as two separate Claude Code messages:

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/opentikz/opentikz
/plugin install opentikz@opentikz

Then describe the figure or edit you want

• "draw an encoder–decoder with a cross-attention block," or,
• pointing at a template, "add a hidden layer / recolor this blue / fit it to a CVPR column."
  The skill finds the figure, copies it into your project, edits it via each template's edit_contract, and compiles it before handing it back. Invoke it as /opentikz:using-opentikz.

Other agents (Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI…). git clone this repo and tell the agent to use skills/using-opentikz/SKILL.md, or just point a GitHub-reading agent at the repo URL.

Prefer no AI? Browse the gallery, copy a figure's .tex, and paste it in — every file is \documentclass{standalone} and compiles as-is.

Why TikZ, and why OpenTikZ

Why TikZ at all? A TikZ figure is source code, not an image:

• Vector quality — crisp at any zoom, sharp in print; no pixelated screenshots.
• Native to your paper — same fonts, math ($\mathbf{W}x$), and \ref/\cite as the document, so the figure looks part of the paper.
• Diffable — version it in git, tweak one number, recompile.

Why not just ask ChatGPT for TikZ directly? You can — but raw LLM TikZ tends to fight you. OpenTikZ anchors the edit to a real, parametric template:

What you care about	Raw LLM TikZ	OpenTikZ + skill
Compiles first try	Often not	Yes, standalone
Packages / macros	Sometimes invented	Real, declared in requires
Colors	Random hex	Shared palette
Re-editing later	Re-describe everything	Stable node names
AI guidance	None	Each template ships an edit_contract

Because every template is parametric, palette-correct, and carries an edit_contract, an agent edits it accurately and fast instead of hand-writing TikZ that may not compile.

A concrete edit

Starting from templates/encoder-decoder/, tell Claude Code:

"add a cross-attention block and make it blue"

Guided by the template's edit_contract — using the shared palette and the template's stable node names — it adds: