Show HN: Reladraw – A diagram language where you decide where to place things
69 points - today at 5:10 PM
I love making diagrams to help understand, plan, etc. However, the options are (A) auto-placement languages like Mermaid or Graphviz (which don't let me decide how the diagram looks), or (B) software like Draw.io which are powerful but are very time consuming (and inefficient for agents to manipulate).
I wanted to have the benefits of both, where you can define a diagram in a diagram language, but also retain a high degree of control over what the diagram looks like.
I also wanted this to work well for humans and agents.
On the Github link, there's a playground where you can try it out without installation. There's also instructions for a simple npm install and for installing a skill you can use with Claude or other agents.
I love it, and I wish it was part of Mermaid. I've always struggled with the presentation and agents tend to hack or just straight use SVG lol
aktenlagetoday at 8:23 PM
That is damn interesting. When I made copilot write a script that creates a .dot diagram, I found it funny that it had the same problems with placement that I have when doing it manually.
patriciobcstoday at 7:57 PM
I was looking for something like this. I wish it had different themes, the will prob be the best improvement.
Fighting with mermaid is so frustraiting, especially when it comes to normal vs github formatting. This is going to replace several ad-hoc half impls I have laying around
lastscatteringtoday at 7:33 PM
This is basically tikz's positioning library (right=of, below left=of) without having to touch LaTeX. With tikz it was never the nodes that hurt me, it was the edges. Once two edges want the same side of a box it gets ugly fast. Does the resolver do any routing, or is from:/to: all you get? And what happens with conflicting statements, does the first one win or do you get an error?