Writing on diagrams
Practical notes on diagrams, docs, and developer ergonomics — published weekly.
Convert draw.io Files to Production-Ready SVG (Without the Default Look)
draw.io's Export → SVG dialog ships a 400 KB blob of embedded fonts and foreign-object text. The path from cleaner native exports to treating the .drawio XML as source and re-rendering it.
Adding Beautiful Diagrams to Your Docusaurus / VitePress Site
Enabling Mermaid in Docusaurus or VitePress takes ten minutes. Making the diagrams stop looking generic takes another thirty. The whole path — plugin config, theming, and when to swap the renderer.
How to Beautify and Theme Mermaid Diagrams in Obsidian & VS Code
The default pastel preview undermines the note you're polishing. Two plugins put a themed Mermaid renderer in the same pane — no round-trip to a web tool. Setup for both, plus the per-file options.
Generate Mermaid from Plain English with AI (CLI Walkthrough)
Most Mermaid friction isn't writing flowcharts — it's remembering syntax for sequence, ER, state, and class diagrams you draw twice a year. Five prompts, five diagrams, one CLI pipe.
Does Notion Support Mermaid? Yes — 4 Ways to Embed and Theme It
Yes — Notion renders Mermaid natively in code blocks, but with one fixed theme and no overrides. Compare the 4 ways to embed and theme Mermaid in Notion in 2026.
How to Render Mermaid Diagrams as SVG (and Stop Looking Like Every Other README)
A practical guide to rendering Mermaid as SVG — from the official CLI to custom themes, font fixes, dark mode, and the fastest path when you don't want to tune anything.