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Ask HN: What would you want from a diagrams-as-code editor?

by jbreckmckye on 5/4/25, 10:03 PM with 5 comments

I'm thinking of taking on a new open source project. This would be a native desktop application distributed under something like GPL or MPL2.

As a software engineer I do a lot of architecture and process diagrams but I find existing web editors for things like D2 and Mermaid somewhat cumbersome. I was thinking of building a dedicated, native editor.

Some features I'm thinking of:

- autocomplete and macros for faster composition

- wizards for common diagram types

- save diagrams as editable PNGs / editable SVGs

- generate code for git "architecture" repositories

- create themes for diagrams

- offline documentation for language syntax

- generate diagrams from json (nodes / edges lists)

- some form of LLM assistant integration, e.g. to bootstrap diagrams with a prompt

What features would make something like this worth using, to you?

  • by ashwinsundar on 5/5/25, 12:06 AM

    I use Mermaid a lot, and my biggest gripe is the lack of normalized syntax. Everytime I want to create a new type of diagram, it's like learning a new language. I'm a big diagram-as-code proponent (https://ashwinsundar.com/posts/diagrams-as-code/) - however, I get the impression that no one at Mermaid is really talking to each other when making new features. There doesn't seem to be much thought for how to make the syntax cohesive or easy-to-grok

  • by solardev on 5/5/25, 1:24 AM

    I love that Mermaid is portable, but I hate its syntax. I wish I could just define the things graphically, dragging nodes around an auto layout canvas, and then have it generate the corresponding code that I could then further edit.

    In other words, the graphical output wouldn't just be a preview of the code, but an editable canvas like Figma or SVG editors.

    Mermaid is so terrible to work with I usually have to use ChatGPT to make all but the simplest diagrams. It is not very good at it though and will frequently hallucinate invalid syntax, especially for less common charts like sankeys.

  • by billconan on 5/4/25, 10:30 PM

    shouldn't this be called code-as-diagram?