I use Excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

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.