KStateMachine Visual — IntelliJ Plugin

Page contents

• Install
• Features
  • Tree view
  • Live PlantUML diagram
  • Bidirectional navigation
  • Gutter icons
  • Export
  • PlantUML Playground
  • Recursive DSL parsing
• Comparison with runtime export
• Source & issues

KStateMachine Visual is an IntelliJ IDEA plugin that visualizes and navigates your state machines directly from Kotlin source — no runtime required.

Unlike runtime export-based diagram generation, the plugin uses static analysis of your Kotlin code, so it finds every state and transition — including those inside conditional branches that runtime export cannot reach.

Install

Via Marketplace (recommended)

Settings → Plugins → Marketplace → search KStateMachine Visual → Install

Manual install

Download the latest .zip from the plugin releases and use Settings → Plugins → ⚙ → Install Plugin from Disk…

Requirements: IntelliJ Platform 2026.1 or later with the bundled Kotlin and Java plugins.

Features

Tree view

Every state machine in the open project is shown as a navigable tree in a dedicated tool window. Specialised icons distinguish state types at a glance:

Icon type	State kind
Initial	Initial state / entry point
Final	Final state (machine stops here)
Choice	Choice pseudo-state
History	History pseudo-state
Data	DataState / DataFinalState
Parallel	Parallel region container

Live PlantUML diagram

The active state machine is rendered as a UML statechart using JS layout engine — no Graphviz installation required. The diagram updates in real time as you edit the source, with debounced refresh to avoid interrupting typing.

Bidirectional navigation

• Click any node in the tree to jump to the corresponding declaration in the editor.
• Place the cursor on a KStateMachine DSL call — the tree scrolls to that node automatically.

Gutter icons

A small icon appears in the editor gutter next to every KStateMachine DSL declaration (createStateMachine, initialState, state, transition, etc.), making it easy to spot machine code at a glance and navigate directly to the tree view.

Export

From the diagram panel you can:

• Copy PlantUML source to the clipboard for use in documentation or external tools.
• Export as PNG or SVG for sharing or embedding in wikis.

PlantUML Playground

A dedicated Playground tab lets you write and preview ad-hoc PlantUML code without leaving the IDE — handy for experimenting with diagram styles or manually sketching a design before coding it.

Recursive DSL parsing

The plugin resolves the full DSL tree at any nesting depth, including states declared inside conditional branches (if, when, transitionConditionally, etc.) that runtime export skips because they are not reachable without running the code.

Comparison with runtime export

	IntelliJ Plugin	Runtime export (exportToPlantUml)
Requires running the app	No	Yes
Sees conditional branches	Yes	No
Real-time diagram updates	Yes	No
IDE navigation	Yes	No
Output format	PNG, SVG, PlantUML source	PlantUML / Mermaid text

Both approaches complement each other: use the plugin for development-time exploration and navigation; use runtime export when you need diagrams embedded in documentation or CI artefacts.

Source & issues

Plugin source code: github.com/KStateMachine/kstatemachine-intellij-platform-plugin

Report bugs or request features in the plugin repository’s Issues tracker.