I reached the same conclusion after comparing diagram-as-code tools — D2 feels cleaner and more expressive than Mermaid.
I’ve been working on an AI diagramming tool built around D2: https://aidiagrammaker.com/
You describe a system in plain English, and it generates architecture diagrams, flowcharts, and sequence diagrams in D2.
Edits can be made either directly in the D2 code or via a context-aware editor.
Oh, finally, something that supports actual hierarchical state diagrams (that isn't Graphviz, no offense)... Mermaid's "You cannot define transitions between internal states belonging to different composite states" [1] has driven me up a wall for years.
The language is richer and all diagram types are implemented consistently in the same language in a way that can be composed, as opposed to being a collection of unrelated DSLs.
The improved visual appearance is clear from inspecting example diagrams, I believe.
- How do you pan? Two finger sliding on the trackpad just zooms.
- Why does the diagram you're working on doesn't use all the remaining space? I picked one example and it's on a small-ish box with controls that don't seem to do anything and half of it is out the screen on the bottom
Ohh... the scroll metaphor... it's annoying. A bunch of tabs would have been better or even a one at a time with a tree somewhere.
There's too much fighting with layout where a plain interface would be better, something closer to https://mermaid.live/
I actually like Mermaid’s text-based approach a lot and wouldn’t want to replace it with a visual editor.
Where I do see room for improvement is the rendering quality. A lot of diagrams end up looking a bit rough, especially with arrow routing and layout, which can feel somewhat arbitrary.
Better layout/rendering would probably add more value (for me at least) than improving the editing experience.
How is this one better? I thought this was going to be a visual editor where you click and edit on the diagram itself. I don't seem to be able to do that here.
The first thing I tried to do is resize that rectangle in the default diagram... and the resize handles do not affect the height, only the width. What is this "better" than?
- Write Mermaid diagrams with a live preview.
- Arrange multiple diagrams on an infinite canvas.
- Group diagrams into multi-page projects.
- Better themes
How does the agent session thing work? Server-side you proxy requests to client via websockets or something? How does the agent see the client-side data?
I’ve been working on an AI diagramming tool built around D2: https://aidiagrammaker.com/ You describe a system in plain English, and it generates architecture diagrams, flowcharts, and sequence diagrams in D2.
Edits can be made either directly in the D2 code or via a context-aware editor.
Plus, according to this comment on an issue, folks in their discord say it's not being actively maintained.
https://github.com/terrastruct/d2/issues/2735#issuecomment-4...
Thanks for sharing
[1] https://mermaid.ai/open-source/syntax/stateDiagram.html#comp...
The language is richer and all diagram types are implemented consistently in the same language in a way that can be composed, as opposed to being a collection of unrelated DSLs.
The improved visual appearance is clear from inspecting example diagrams, I believe.
And, does GitHub support it? (Follow up: alas not! Sadness. Please add!)
- How do you pan? Two finger sliding on the trackpad just zooms.
- Why does the diagram you're working on doesn't use all the remaining space? I picked one example and it's on a small-ish box with controls that don't seem to do anything and half of it is out the screen on the bottom
Ohh... the scroll metaphor... it's annoying. A bunch of tabs would have been better or even a one at a time with a tree somewhere.
There's too much fighting with layout where a plain interface would be better, something closer to https://mermaid.live/
Where I do see room for improvement is the rendering quality. A lot of diagrams end up looking a bit rough, especially with arrow routing and layout, which can feel somewhat arbitrary.
Better layout/rendering would probably add more value (for me at least) than improving the editing experience.
%%{init: {"theme": "base", "themeVariables": { "pie1": "#FF5733", "pie2": "#33FF57", "pie3": "#3357FF", "pieStrokeColor": "#000000", "pieStrokeWidth": 3, "pieOpacity": 0.8 }}}%%
This looks like it works on this site too.