Last week, I was given an urgent assignment: to give a technical architecture presentation to an investor.
I stared at the blank PPT page, scrambling to drag and drop shapes, adjust lines, and correct alignment ...... Two hours later, the architecture diagram still looked like a "ball of wool". What's even more devastating is that the product manager temporarily asked to modify the core module, so I had to start all over again.
Just as I was on the verge of a breakdown, a coworker quietly pushed a link to me:
"Try this. I used it for last week's architecture diagram in ten minutes."
This is the artifact to be recommended today - theSmart ExcalidrawOneAutomatic generation of professional charts in natural languageThe AI tool. It has revolutionized the way I create technical documentation.
🎨 Why I'm willing to give up Visio and PPT?
Look at the effect first:
👉 Click to experience the online version
Type in a description like this:
"Design a microservices architecture diagram for an e-commerce system with user service, product service, order service, payment service, unified access with API gateway, database using MySQL cluster, caching with Redis"
After 10 seconds, a professional-grade architecture diagram pops up on the screen-Elements are well laid out, well connected, and color-coordinated, so even a design-less programmer like me can produce a high quality chart in seconds.
And what surprised me even more was that this chartFully editable: I want to reposition a module? Just drag it. Want to change the color scheme? Tap to finish. Want to add comments? Type it directly on the canvas.
This is the perfect workflow for real "AI generation + manual finishing".
⚡ Five core features that bring simplicity back to chart creation
✅ 1. Generate a professional chart in one sentence
No need to learn complex mapping tools, just describe your needs in natural language:
- "Draw a flowchart of a user login with cell phone number verification and third party login"
- "Create a blockchain three-layer architecture diagram showing the data, network, and application layers"
- "Designing a machine learning training process from data preprocessing to model deployment"
Full coverage of 20+ chart types: Flowchart, Architecture Diagram, Timing Diagram, ER Diagram, Mind Map, Network Topology Diagram ......AI automatically selects the most appropriate diagram type.
✅ 2. Unique smart connectivity algorithm, say goodbye to "cobwebs".
The most annoying thing about traditional tools is that the lines cross, overlap, and can't find the endpoints.Smart Excalidraw uses theOriginal arrow optimization algorithm, automatically calculates the optimal connection paths to ensure that each line is clear, logical, and free of crossovers.
"Finally, I don't have to wrestle with arrows in PPTs anymore!" -- Some back-end engineer who used it for 3 days
✅ 3. Perfect Excalidraw integration, free editing without limitations
The generated charts are entirely based on the open source drawing tool Excalidraw, which means:
- 100% is compatible with all Excalidraw features.
- Free to adjust the style, color, thickness of the elements
- Support hand-drawn style to make charts more vivid
- Export to PNG/SVG for seamless integration into any document
✅ 4. Privacy and security, the data belongs to you only!
- All configuration information is stored only in theYour Browser Local
- Chart data is not uploaded to any server
- API key encrypted storage, secure and worry-free
✅ 5. Extreme performance with 3-second mapping
Based on the advanced large language model (recommended Claude-4.5-Sonnet), it understands the needs more accurately and generates faster. Complex charts take only 3-10 seconds on average, say goodbye to waiting completely.
🚀 3 Steps to Getting Started, 5 Minutes to Becoming a Chart Master
Step 1: Configure AI (30 seconds)
- Click on the "Configure LLM" button in the upper right corner.
- Select provider (OpenAI or Anthropic)
- Enter API Key (benefits at the end of the article)
- Select model (highly recommended)
claude-sonnet-4.5(for best results)
Step 2: Describe your needs (10 seconds)
Describe the diagram requirements in natural language in the input box, for example:
Draw a user registration flowchart, including email verification, cell phone verification and third-party login three ways, and finally enter the profile improvement pageStep 3: Edit and Export (optional)
- Free adjustment on the canvas after generation
- Modify color, size, position
- Add and delete elements
- Export as PNG/SVG
💼 Real-world usage scenarios with efficiency gains of 300%
Scenario 1: Technical Program Design
traditional approach: Architecture drawings in Visio, average 2 hours/diagram, revisions require redoing 30% content
Smart Excalidraw: Describe requirements → Generate → Fine-tune, 20 minutes to complete, modification only need to restate the requirements
Scenario 2: Real-time recording of meetings
Listen and type as you go along in technical discussions:
"To record today's discussion: we decided to go with a K8s deployment, with Next.js on the front-end, the back-end split into three microservices for users, orders, and payments, and the database split into libraries and tables with PostgreSQL"
10 seconds.A map of discussion points is automatically generated and projected onto the conference room screen for all to see at a glance.
Scenario 3: Teaching and knowledge organization
Lecturers use it to quickly generate instructional schematics:
"Draw a neural network three-layer structure graph with 5 nodes in the input layer, 8 in the hidden layer, and 3 in the output layer, labeled with forward and backward propagation directions"
Learners use it to organize their knowledge:
"Draw a React component lifecycle flowchart, organized by mount, update, and unload phases"
🔧 Local Deployment Guide
Want complete control over your data? Smart Excalidraw supports local deployment:
# Clone the project
git clone your repository
cd smart-excalidraw-next
# install dependencies
pnpm install
# Start the development server
pnpm devinterviews http://localhost:3000 Full functionality is available and all data is on your own machine.
technology stack: Next.js 16 + React 19 + Excalidraw + Tailwind CSS 4 + Monaco Editor
🔗 Summary of resources
- Online Experience::https://smart-excalidraw.aizhi.site/
- GitHub repository::https://github.com/liujuntao123/smart-excalidraw-next
- Using Documents: README.md in the repository
- local deployment: Support for Docker one-click deployment, see GitHub for details
A techie's expression shouldn't be limited by tools.
Smart Excalidraw, so that every professional, can be seen.