Guides
19 guides on diagram as code. Practical writing from the team building Atlas, useful whether or not you buy anything.
DBML lets you describe a database in a few readable lines of text and get an ERD from it. It is diagram-as-code for schemas, and this guide covers the syntax and the workflow.
Your SQL DDL already defines every table, key, and constraint. Turning CREATE TABLE statements into an ERD is a translation exercise, and this guide gives you the mapping.
Your Prisma schema already describes every entity and relationship in your database. Turning it into an ERD is less about drawing and more about translating what the schema already says.
PlantUML and Graphviz are both text-to-diagram tools, and PlantUML even uses Graphviz under the hood: yet they serve different purposes. This guide clarifies when to reach for each.
Should you write diagrams as text or draw them in a visual editor? Each approach wins in different situations. This guide lays out the trade-offs and shows how to get the best of both.
D2 is a newer diagram-as-code language designed for readability and good-looking output. This guide covers its clean syntax for shapes, connections, containers, and styling.
Graphviz turns a plain-text description of nodes and edges into an automatically laid-out graph. This guide covers the DOT language, the attributes that control appearance, and the layout engines that place everything.
PlantUML lets you write a diagram as a few lines of text and get a rendered UML diagram back. This guide covers the syntax, the diagram types, and how to make it part of a workflow that stays current.
The Mermaid timeline diagram turns a list of dates and events into a clean chronological visual. This guide covers the exact syntax, the grouping tricks, and where it fits.
Code has version control; diagrams usually do not, which is why they drift and no one knows who changed what. This guide covers making diagrams as trackable as the code they describe.
A good diagram in documentation replaces paragraphs of prose that nobody reads. The trick is choosing the right diagrams and keeping them honest as the software changes.
Diagrams drawn by hand drift from the code they describe. Generating diagrams from the source keeps them honest: this guide covers the main approaches and their trade-offs.
PlantUML, Mermaid, and draw.io are three of the most popular ways developers make diagrams. Two are code-based and one is visual. Here is a fair look at when each fits.
The Mermaid snippets you look up again and again, collected in one quick reference across every major diagram type.
Mermaid and PlantUML are the two heavyweights of diagram-as-code. Here is an honest comparison to help you pick the right one.
Diagram-as-code treats diagrams like source: written in text, versioned in Git, reviewed in pull requests, and never out of date.
Everything you need to write Mermaid flowcharts: every node shape, arrow style, and layout option, with real syntax you can paste and adapt.
Sequence diagrams show how parts of a system talk to each other over time. Mermaid makes them fast to write and easy to keep current.
Mermaid turns plain text into diagrams. Write a few lines of readable syntax and get a flowchart, sequence diagram, or gantt chart: no dragging boxes.
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