title: "So, You Can Just Type a Flowchart Now?" date: "2024-05-02" excerpt: "Stumbled across a tool that promises to turn text into diagrams. My initial skepticism, and what happened when I actually tried it."
So, You Can Just Type a Flowchart Now?
Okay, full disclosure: I've spent an embarrassing amount of time wrestling with diagramming tools. You know the drill – drag a shape, type some text, connect it with a line, realize you forgot a step, move everything around, the lines go wonky... it's a productivity black hole disguised as visualization. Especially when you're trying to quickly map out a process, or maybe just figure out your own tangled thoughts on screen.
So when I came across the idea of just typing out a description and having a flowchart pop out, my first reaction was, "Yeah, right." It sounds almost too simple, doesn't it? Like one of those promises that falls apart the second you try it with anything more complex than a two-step process.
The specific thing I ended up playing with is over at https://www.textimagecraft.com/zh/mermaid (yeah, the URL has 'zh' but the interface speaks English, thankfully). It uses something called Mermaid syntax, which I'd heard of but never really bothered with because, honestly, typing code for a diagram felt like trading one kind of pain for another.
But the promise of this tool wasn't about learning Mermaid syntax; it was about taking plain English (or close enough) and generating that syntax, and then the diagram. The idea is you describe your process: "Start here --> Do this step --> If condition A is true, go to Step B; If false, go to Step C --> Step B joins Step C --> End." You type that kind of thing into a box, hit go, and theoretically, a neat flowchart appears.
My experience? Well, it wasn't perfectly intuitive right off the bat – figuring out exactly how to phrase things to get the right nodes and arrows took maybe two or three tries on a simple example. You quickly learn it likes clear distinctions between steps and decisions. But once I got the hang of its logic, it was surprisingly fast. Like, really fast compared to the drag-and-drop method.
I typed in a description for a basic content creation workflow: "Idea generation leads to Research. Research results in an Outline. Outline goes to Drafting. Drafting needs Review. If Review is approved, Publish. If Review needs revision, go back to Drafting."
Typing that took maybe 30 seconds. Seeing the diagram build itself instantly felt... powerful? Or maybe just immensely satisfying after years of manual layout.
The diagrams generated are clean. Simple. They get the job done without all the visual clutter you sometimes get with complex diagramming software. For anyone needing to quickly make a flowchart, visualize a process from a description, or simplify documentation with diagrams without spending half the afternoon on formatting, this approach feels genuinely promising. It's a totally different way to create process diagrams – less about pixel-pushing, more about defining the logic.
Is it going to replace a full-fledged drawing tool for every single use case? Probably not for highly customized, visually complex diagrams. But for sketching out workflows, explaining procedures to a team, or just getting an idea out of your head and into a visual form without the friction, this text-based generation thing? It's a serious contender. It solves the "how to quickly create process diagrams" problem in a way that feels genuinely modern and efficient. It makes the underlying mermaid syntax flowchart online accessible without needing to be a coder.
Honestly, it changed my mind. What seemed like a gimmick at first turned out to be a pretty smart way to bypass the tedious parts of diagramming. If you find yourself needing to whip up flowcharts frequently and dread opening your usual diagramming app, something like this is absolutely worth a look. It might just save you a significant chunk of your life.