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Excalidraw's AI Tool – useful and underrated

news.ycombinator.com

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Excalidraw's AI Tool – useful and underrated

#1

Post by Olshansky »

tl;dr Easy 10x on generating sequence diagrams, flow charts and system diagrams.

I tweeted about using Excalidraw's AI tool recently: https://x.com/olshansky/status/1824168148867629340

I have a hunch that because it's not a standalone tool or a GitHub repo, it didn't get the love it deserved.

Aside from ChatGPT/Claude and Supermaven/Copilot, this has been one of the best AI tools I use on an almost daily basis.

Anytime I need to build a diagram, the first 50% (if not more) is done with this tool. I even have the option of a mermaid diagram for our docs or a pretty diagram for marketing material.

Like any AI tool, don't expect it to be perfect or get you 100% of the way there, but it will definitely save you some time and solve the blank page problem.

Re: Excalidraw's AI Tool – useful and underrated

#3

Post by exhaze »

purple-leafy wrote: post #2

This is an advert

I checked out the poster:

1. They don't seem to have any affiliation with the company

2. Excalidraw doesn't seem to have any sort of affiliate program

3. "Why is Excalidraw so good?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109995

I think a lot of people just like it that much

Re: Excalidraw's AI Tool – useful and underrated

#4

Post by ssousa666 »

exhaze wrote: post #3
purple-leafy wrote: post #2

This is an advert

I checked out the poster: 1. They don't seem to have any affiliation with the company 2. Excalidraw doesn't seem to have any sort of affiliate program 3. "Why is Excalidraw so good?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109995 I think a lot of people just like it that much

The AI tool is actually quite good, too. I use it to generate sequence diagrams pretty frequently.

Re: Excalidraw's AI Tool – useful and underrated

#5

Post by dansult »

ssousa666 wrote: post #4
exhaze wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I checked out the poster: 1. They don't seem to have any affiliation with the company 2. Excalidraw doesn't seem to have any sort of affiliate program 3. "Why is Excalidraw so good?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109995 I think a lot of people just like it that much

The AI tool is actually quite good, too. I use it to generate sequence diagrams pretty frequently.

I use mermaid.js a lot but not enough that I an fluent in the DSL. So I pump things into excalidraw's AI and tell it to create the mermaid chart. It gets my 80% of the way and I tweak/extend from there. If nothing else its awesome for that

Re: Excalidraw's AI Tool – useful and underrated

#6

Post by Olshansky »

exhaze wrote: post #3
purple-leafy wrote: post #2

This is an advert

I checked out the poster: 1. They don't seem to have any affiliation with the company 2. Excalidraw doesn't seem to have any sort of affiliate program 3. "Why is Excalidraw so good?" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109995 I think a lot of people just like it that much

Haha, appreciate the extra checks.

Sometimes you get so much value out of a free service you feel the need to tell the world :)

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