flowgo

A tiny mind-map / flowchart editor that round-trips between a browser GUI and a plain-text .flowgo file. Every change in the GUI rewrites the file, and the file is the source of truth — you can hand-edit it, version-control it, or generate it from another tool.

Install

From a checkout of this repo:

go install .

This drops a flowgo binary into $(go env GOBIN) (or $(go env GOPATH)/bin). Make sure that directory is on your PATH.

For a one-off build without installing:

go build -o flowgo .

Verify:

flowgo version
flowgo help

Run

flowgo mindmap.flowgo

The binary starts an HTTP server on a random 127.0.0.1 port, prints the URL, and tries to open your browser. If the file doesn't exist it's created empty.

Editor

Action	Result
+ Box / double-click empty canvas	Add a new box (centered at cursor) and edit
Click a box	Select it
Double-click a box	Edit its label inline (Enter / Escape)
Drag a box body	Move it (and any other boxes selected)
⌥-drag a box body	Duplicate the selection and drag the copies
Drag on empty canvas	Rubber-band select boxes; Shift to add
Drag a blue dot to another box / handle	Create a connection (replaces any prior one)
Drag a blue dot onto an existing handle	Re-route the existing connection
Drag a blue dot into empty space	Spawn a new box and connect to it
Click an edge	Select it (turns blue + thicker)
Delete / Backspace	Remove all selected boxes / the selected edge
Middle-click or ⌘-click a box	Enter its submap
↑ Up / breadcrumb segments	Navigate back up

Connections are undirected and at most one exists between any pair of boxes — creating a new one between A and B replaces any prior connection.

Each map has its own box-ID namespace; deleting a box also removes its submap and all descendants.

File format

Plain UTF-8 text, one directive per line, # for comments.

# optional map header; defaults to "/" if omitted
map /

box <id> <label> <x> <y>
edge <id>[:<handle>] <id>[:<handle>]

• id is alphanumeric; unique within its map.
• label is bare word or "quoted string" (use \" and \\ to escape).
• <handle> is one of t, r, b, l, tl, tr, bl, br — a side or corner of the box. Omit to let the renderer auto-pick the nearest handle.
• map <path> switches the current map. Paths look like /, /b1, /b1/c2. Each path corresponds to "the inside of" the box at that path.

Example

box b1 "Project" 120 100
box b2 "Notes"   320 100
edge b1:r b2:l

map /b1
box c1 "Goals"     100 100
box c2 "Open issues" 280 100
edge c1 c2

map /b1/c2
box d1 "Bug #42" 100 100

Files without any map directive parse as a single root map — fully backwards-compatible with the flat form.

MCP (AI integration)

flowgo <file> also serves a Model Context Protocol endpoint at /mcp on the same port as the GUI. Point any MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, etc.) at:

http://127.0.0.1:<port>/mcp

The port is printed at startup next to MCP:. Both the GUI and MCP share the same file mutex, so AI edits and GUI edits coexist safely.

Available tools:

• get_state — read the full graph
• set_state — overwrite the full graph
• add_box, update_box, delete_box
• add_edge, delete_edge
• add_text, add_line

All tools take an optional path (defaults to /) so AI can target submaps. The transport is JSON-RPC 2.0 over POST (streamable-HTTP, simple form — no sessions or SSE).

Releases

Releases are managed by release-please. Push commits to main using Conventional Commits (feat:, fix:, feat!: for breaking changes, etc.) and the workflow will open a "release-PR". Merging that PR tags a new version, creates a GitHub release, and attaches prebuilt binaries for linux/{amd64,arm64}, darwin/{amd64,arm64}, and windows/amd64.

Versioning policy (configured in release-please-config.json):

• Tags are plain semver (0.0.1, 0.0.2, …) — no v prefix.
• We're in the pre-1.0 phase: bump-patch-for-minor-pre-major makes regular feat: commits bump the patch (so we stay in 0.0.*); breaking changes (feat!: / BREAKING CHANGE:) bump the minor (0.0.* → 0.1.0).

The version baked into the release binaries is set via -ldflags "-X main.version=<tag>" and is shown by flowgo version.