I love diagramming, but I genuinely don't understand how people can use these wonky looking tools. It looks off, I had to make my own[1] to create something that's easy to use and looks good/normal.
I like the wonky, hand-drawn looking style. I think it fits well beause usually if I use a diagram it's not 100% precise and accurate, but more a high-level illustration. The wonky style conveys the approximate precision of the presented concept.
Depends on what you want to achieve with your look. Do you want to scream professionalism, authority, and completed?
Use a regular UML tool.
Want to say this is a rough draft of a few ideas? Then using UML is probably THE wrong look. And Exaclidraw should be used instead.
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Anecdote time. According to one of my professors, they showed how the prototype will look in action, and the customers were so impressed by the smoke and mirrors prototype they wanted to start using it right away.
In the end, customer walked away because they thought they were being strung along to pay for something that was already done.
I made a custom Payload CMS block that allows to create and update excalidraw diagrams within the CMS. It supports dark and light mode switching and rendering inline or as external SVG.
And last weekend I added MCP server with Oauth so I could generate and update those diagrams and add them to post drafts from Claude. I think it is more convenient since I don't have to use API billing model and don't need to build a custom UI.
Originally I wanted to sync posts from Obsidian but it doesn't have good enough image handling which I sometimes need and I needed extra metadata to unlist or password protect or noindex some posts.
The Excalidraw website describes itself as: Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.
And the GitHub repo says: An open source virtual hand-drawn style whiteboard.
Collaborative and end-to-end encrypted.
I simply just draw in excalidraw and take a ss and past it in my obsidian note, I have a setup that automatically parses posts from my vault and then pushes them to my site
You can also bootstrap your initial schema with LLMs with the excalidraw MCP "app" [0]. But MCP "apps"[1] are quite new and not very well supported yet.
I didn't have good experience with excalidraw-mcp when it first came out a month ago; the Claude-generated diagrams were too raw/unpolished. I'm sticking to mermaid for now but I'm interested in hearing how people make exclidraw-mcp work for them
Everyone does that these days and they are becoming AI tells like the em-dash or the blue-glow of the early AI generated images that everyone added to their blog posts.
AI can generate mermaid diagrams, not excalidraw. If you use the mermaid to excalidraw, i guess it can be, but it just looks like a mermaid diagram then and not an excalidraw.
Same. I started using it for Gethly blog. It's not perfect, some things make me crazy but overall it is better than draw.io that I used to use before. Excalidraw also has these great styles that just feel right :)
I use Excalidraw extensively at work. For me, it's really close to perfection.
It has an excellent UI, selections work way better than Lucid or Figma etc, the sketchy look makes it clear designs are rough and not blueprints, it's private and loads instantly.
The one negative is that it's a pain to get the multiplayer self-hosted version running.
Both Excalidraw and TLDraw are the two most popular apps of their kind, simplistic whiteboard tools, so I don't think it's that surprising and I don't see any reason why this post should be a "Show HN".
For me, draw.io is still the winner, and especially now that it runs locally also on Linux. As for works in progress, I hope this one succeeds (and would also run locally at some point):
I love excalidraw, but don't need the excalidraw+. But Excalidraw open source is the frontend only, which means I have to delete my drawings each time. So I built the backend so I can create many canvases.
Your site makes me make an account before I can use it, whereas excalidraw.com doesn't, and also excalidraw.com seems to save my drawing just fine? I closed a tab and reopened it and my drawing was still there, presumably from localStorage.
The three-lines-menu also has a "Save to..." option that lets you create a sharable link or save to your local disk.
I love diagramming, but I genuinely don't understand how people can use these wonky looking tools. It looks off, I had to make my own[1] to create something that's easy to use and looks good/normal.
[1] https://grafly.io
I like the wonky, hand-drawn looking style. I think it fits well beause usually if I use a diagram it's not 100% precise and accurate, but more a high-level illustration. The wonky style conveys the approximate precision of the presented concept.
Also, and that's personal, I think it's cute.
In Excalidraw, you can reduce (and completely remove) the "sloppiness" in the element properties.
> It looks off
Depends on what you want to achieve with your look. Do you want to scream professionalism, authority, and completed? Use a regular UML tool.
Want to say this is a rough draft of a few ideas? Then using UML is probably THE wrong look. And Exaclidraw should be used instead.
--- Anecdote time. According to one of my professors, they showed how the prototype will look in action, and the customers were so impressed by the smoke and mirrors prototype they wanted to start using it right away.
In the end, customer walked away because they thought they were being strung along to pay for something that was already done.
looks awesome man !
Another option I use open is to ask the ode-agent to make a diagram using Tikz (as a .tex file), which can then be converted to pdf/png.
But in general AI-diagramming is still unsolved; needs several iterations to get rid of wonky/wrong arrows, misplaced boxes, misplaced text etc.
Cool, I did a similar thing last week.
I made a custom Payload CMS block that allows to create and update excalidraw diagrams within the CMS. It supports dark and light mode switching and rendering inline or as external SVG.
And last weekend I added MCP server with Oauth so I could generate and update those diagrams and add them to post drafts from Claude. I think it is more convenient since I don't have to use API billing model and don't need to build a custom UI.
Here is an example post: https://www.janhouse.lv/blog/network/self-hosting-tailscale-...
Originally I wanted to sync posts from Obsidian but it doesn't have good enough image handling which I sometimes need and I needed extra metadata to unlist or password protect or noindex some posts.
Excalidraw has proliferated quite widely in my company since we got Claude Code. Its a shame the default font is ugly, childish and inaccessible.
Whiteboard handwriting is childish?
It's not on a whiteboard, nor was it written by hand. It's a computer font.
The Excalidraw website describes itself as: Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.
And the GitHub repo says: An open source virtual hand-drawn style whiteboard. Collaborative and end-to-end encrypted.
It's the intended design...
Cool. I have stated my opinions on their intended design.
Great article, should make sure to attribute xkcd comics though.
https://xkcd.com/about/
I simply just draw in excalidraw and take a ss and past it in my obsidian note, I have a setup that automatically parses posts from my vault and then pushes them to my site
I use the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin, means I can add diagrams to notes without leaving Obsidian.
Yeah I use that plugin too. I was just referencing it in relation to how I setup my blog[1]
[1]: https://darshanmakwana412.github.io/2026/03/a-system-of-jour...
You can also bootstrap your initial schema with LLMs with the excalidraw MCP "app" [0]. But MCP "apps"[1] are quite new and not very well supported yet.
[0] -- https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw-mcp
[1] -- https://modelcontextprotocol.io/extensions/apps/overview
I didn't have good experience with excalidraw-mcp when it first came out a month ago; the Claude-generated diagrams were too raw/unpolished. I'm sticking to mermaid for now but I'm interested in hearing how people make exclidraw-mcp work for them
Everyone does that these days and they are becoming AI tells like the em-dash or the blue-glow of the early AI generated images that everyone added to their blog posts.
AI can generate mermaid diagrams, not excalidraw. If you use the mermaid to excalidraw, i guess it can be, but it just looks like a mermaid diagram then and not an excalidraw.
PlantUML is a better ask for LLMs, you have a lot more control over the output
https://claude.com/connectors/excalidraw-app-demo
nice one!
Same. I started using it for Gethly blog. It's not perfect, some things make me crazy but overall it is better than draw.io that I used to use before. Excalidraw also has these great styles that just feel right :)
Should be Show HN.
Now it reads like an ad for some extension to a program I've never heard about.
Apparently Excalidraw is An open source virtual hand-drawn style whiteboard. Collaborative and end-to-end encrypted.
https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw
I use Excalidraw extensively at work. For me, it's really close to perfection.
It has an excellent UI, selections work way better than Lucid or Figma etc, the sketchy look makes it clear designs are rough and not blueprints, it's private and loads instantly.
The one negative is that it's a pain to get the multiplayer self-hosted version running.
I was surprised about that, too. Tried a bit but found very few sources online.
A self-hosted version with storage (multiplayer) plus any Claude access would be a killer setup for team planning etc and let us drop Miro.
Both Excalidraw and TLDraw are the two most popular apps of their kind, simplistic whiteboard tools, so I don't think it's that surprising and I don't see any reason why this post should be a "Show HN".
TLDraw: https://www.tldraw.com/
Excalidraw: https://excalidraw.com/
For me, draw.io is still the winner, and especially now that it runs locally also on Linux. As for works in progress, I hope this one succeeds (and would also run locally at some point):
TikzMaker: https://tikzmaker.com/
I love excalidraw, but don't need the excalidraw+. But Excalidraw open source is the frontend only, which means I have to delete my drawings each time. So I built the backend so I can create many canvases.
https://drawx.ossy.dev
I actually created a completely free chrome extension exactly for that reason helps you to save and open the files at excalidraw
https://github.com/AykutSarac/excalihub
Your site makes me make an account before I can use it, whereas excalidraw.com doesn't, and also excalidraw.com seems to save my drawing just fine? I closed a tab and reopened it and my drawing was still there, presumably from localStorage.
The three-lines-menu also has a "Save to..." option that lets you create a sharable link or save to your local disk.
You can also embed the excalidraw drawing in the exported image. So you can drag/drop the exorted image back into excalidraw and edit it later.
Pretty new to hn, thanks for the hint