New Open-Source Tool 'Reladraw' Lets Users Draw Diagrams With Text Instead of Coordinates

A new open-source project called Reladraw has surfaced on Hacker News, pitching a novel approach to diagram creation: describing where things go in plain text, rather than dragging shapes around a canvas or hand-coding pixel coordinates.

The project, hosted on GitHub under the repository reladraw/reladraw, is built around what its creator describes as "a text language for diagrams where you say where things go." Instead of specifying absolute positions, users write statements that describe relationships between diagram elements, and a layout engine resolves those statements into a finished visual.

A browser-based demo lets visitors try the tool without installing anything. Users can edit source text in a panel on one side of the screen and watch the corresponding diagram re-render in real time on the other, giving an immediate sense of how textual descriptions translate into visual layout.

As a demonstration, the project includes an example file, examples/arch.reladraw, which renders an architecture-style diagram using 44 statements and, notably, no explicit coordinates. The example is meant to illustrate the core pitch of the tool: diagrams defined by relationships and intent rather than manual placement.

The project was shared on Hacker News under the title "Show HN: Reladraw – A diagram language where you decide where to place things," a forum where developers frequently post early-stage tools for community feedback. Beyond the GitHub repository and the linked demo, limited additional information is publicly available about the project's origins, maintainers, or roadmap. Readers interested in technical specifics, licensing terms, or the project's development history are encouraged to consult the GitHub repository directly.