Where it lives: Inside the SmartDraw editor (https://app.smartdraw.com) and on https://www.smartdraw.com, including the AI button in the editor sidebar and the AI starting points on floor plan templates.
What it does: Take your prompt, sends it to SmartDraw's AI back-end, which in turn calls a third party language model to interpret your request and produce VSON. SmartDraw renders the VSON as a fully editable SmartDraw drawing.
Who processes your prompt: SmartDraw uses OpenAI as the underlying model provider for the SmartDraw AI prompt. Prompts and any pasted content (Mermaid blocks, VSON, data, floor plan notation) are sent to OpenAI through SmartDraw's account, governed by OpenAI's API terms (zero data retention, no training on customer inputs).
What is stored, and for how long:
- Your prompt and the generated VSON are stored in your SmartDraw document as part of the document's history, just like any manual edit. You can delete them at any time by deleting the document.
- Diagnostic telemetry about the request (which Skill handled it, whether clarification was needed, whether the user accepted the output) is stored under the same retention rules as the rest of your SmartDraw usage data. See the Privacy Notice for details.
What is not stored: SmartDraw does not retain your prompt content outside your drawing's history. OpenAI does not retain it under its zero-retention policy.
Where it lives: At https://mcp.smartdraw.com/mcp. Your AI platform connects to it as an MCP server after you authorize the connection.
What it does: Receives VSON generated by an LLM (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) and returns a rendered SVG preview image and a hyperlink that opens the drawing in the SmartDraw editor. The MCP Server is the bridge that turns LLM-generated VSON into a real SmartDraw drawing.
Who processes what:
- The LLM you are using sends VSON, a short title, and a diagram type to the SmartDraw MCP Server.
- The MCP Server passes the VSON to SmartDraw's conversion service, which renders it as an SVG.
- The SmartDraw MCP Server returns the rendered image and an edit link to the LLM, which shows them to you.
SmartDraw never receives your original natural language prompt or the rest of your conversation with the LLM. SmartDraw only sees the VSON the LLM chose to send.
What is stored, and for how long:
- VSON - Each VSON payload sent to the MCP Server is stored under a unique VSON ID for a limited time, then automatically deleted. The window is typically 1-week and is what makes the "Open in SmartDraw" link work after the LLM finishes its response.
- Rendered images - The SVG image generated from your VSON is stored alongside the VSON for the same 1-week window, so the image preview link continues to resolve.
- Edit links - A short, opaque URL containing only the VSON ID. The VSON itself is never embedded in any URL.
After this limited time, the VSON and image are deleted from the MCP Server. If you opened the document in the SmartDraw editor and saved it to your SmartDraw account, that saved copy is yours and follows the standard SmartDraw retention rules for your account.
What is not stored:
- Your LLM conversation history (SmartDraw never sees it).
- Your prompt (SmartDraw never sees it).
- Any data from other MCP servers your LLM may also have access to unless specifically requested by you.
Many users connect the SmartDraw MCP Server alongside other MCP servers (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Jira, and others). In those workflows, the LLM may pull data from another source, decide it should become a diagram, and then send VSON to the SmartDraw MCP Server.
SmartDraw still only receives the VSON and context of what tools were used. SmartDraw does not see the source data, the other MCP server's responses, or your conversation with the LLM. The other MCP server's data handling is governed by that vendor's terms.
- Disconnect the MCP Server at any time. Remove the SmartDraw MCP connector from your AI platform to stop sending any VSON to SmartDraw.
- Delete documents. Documents you saved to your SmartDraw account follow your account's normal delete and retention rules.
The SmartDraw AI prompt uses OpenAI as its underlying LLM provider, governed by OpenAI's API terms.
The SmartDraw MCP Server runs on SmartDraw's hosted infrastructure. Click here for the full processor list.
For privacy questions, contact privacy@smartdraw.com. For enterprise data handling questions, contact your SmartDraw account team.