I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog
Excalidraw, a hand-drawn style, open source whiteboard tool, is emerging as a popular way to create technical diagrams for blogs and documentation, valued for its low-friction sketching, collaboration features, and ability to integrate with workflows like Obsidian, CMSs, and Git-based version control. Commenters compare it with alternatives such as draw.io, Mermaid, PlantUML, TikZ, and newer tools like Grafly, debating trade-offs between aesthetics, professionalism, ease of editing, and “diagrams as code.” There is growing interest in combining Excalidraw with LLMs and the Model Context Protocol to auto-generate or refine diagrams, though many note that AI-produced visuals still require manual polishing and that complex systems diagrams remain hard to keep accurate and maintainable.
Overall reception of Excalidraw
- Many commenters use Excalidraw heavily for work, blogging, and thinking, calling it low-friction, fast, and “close to perfect” for sketching.
- Praised for: keyboard shortcuts, infinite canvas, collaborative features, privacy, local storage, and the “hand-drawn” look that signals rough/early-stage ideas rather than finalized designs.
- Some find it “mediocre” or frustrating: arrow auto-attachment, scaling quirks, undo/redo issues, missing basic text formatting (bold/italic), and long-stalled features (e.g., math mode PR).
Alternatives & preferences
- Competing tools frequently mentioned:
- Diagramming/whiteboard: draw.io/diagrams.net, TLDraw, Lucid, Miro, Whimsical, Umlet/Umletino, Grafly, Graphviz, Obsidian Excalidraw plugin, payload-CMS integrations.
- Diagram-as-code: Mermaid, PlantUML, TikZ, Graphlet.
- Some prefer more “normal” or professional-looking diagrams and feel Excalidraw’s style is visually distracting or unprofessional for customer-facing docs.
Style, professionalism, and “sloppiness”
- Strong split on the sketchy font and “wonky” style:
- Critics: say it looks childish, hard to read, or like an “AI tell,” and leads to tool fragmentation when more formal diagrams are needed.
- Supporters: argue it communicates that content is conceptual, not final; reduces premature “this is done” assumptions.
- Several note you can disable sloppiness and switch to sans-serif or monospaced fonts for cleaner output; some use “sloppy” for drafts and “clean” for finalized diagrams.
Self-hosting, storage, and integrations
- Multiplayer/self-hosted setup is described as painful or poorly documented, leading some to build their own backends or collaboration platforms.
- Others add version-control and multi-canvas support, or integrate Excalidraw directly with CMSs, VS Code, or Obsidian.
- Chrome extensions and custom servers are used for file management and persistence beyond localStorage.
AI, diagram-as-code, and workflows
- Excalidraw plus Mermaid/PlantUML/TikZ is a recurring theme:
- Many like text-based diagrams because they live in Git, can be generated/updated by code or LLMs, and keep documentation closer to the codebase.
- Excalidraw’s ability to import Mermaid (and CSV → charts) is highlighted as a powerful hybrid: AI or code generates Mermaid, then humans refine in Excalidraw.
- Experiences with Excalidraw MCP + LLMs are mixed; some find the diagrams too raw and prefer Mermaid or PlantUML for now.
- Several emphasize that diagrams are most useful as early-stage sketches and often become out-of-date; some treat them as disposable, others keep them in sync via text-based formats and version control.
Implementation details & theming
- Discussion on managing multiple “frames” in a single Excalidraw file and exporting them for blogs.
- SVG export is used heavily; some debate single SVG with CSS-based dark mode vs separate light/dark files, with GitHub’s limitations influencing choices.