Mermaid diagrams let you instantly turn simple, everyday text into clear, professional diagrams—no coding or design skills needed. It's your "easy button" for making visual ideas fast.

Streamline Diagram Creation with Expanse and Mermaid

Large Language Models (LLMs) excel at generating Mermaid diagrams, giving users a powerful way to visualize complex information through simple text commands. This text-to-diagram workflow offers remarkable efficiency, allowing anyone to create professional diagrams without specialized design skills or software.

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AI understands Mermaid diagrams better than visual diagrams that are pasted as screenshots. Therefore Mermaid diagrams keep your docs accessible for AI.

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Quick example

Goal: Instantly create a pie chart—without touching any design tools.

How? Just asked an AI to write a few lines of Mermaid text. Done.

Click here to see the chat thread. Copy the mermaid text to this website to get the image.

In the chat thread, you can click on the Role at the bottom to see what was used. Note that you can use this same prompt with any LLM or chat interface, but Expanse Roles make this fast and easy.

https://share.expanse.com/thread/79908P

How LLMs Transform Diagram Creation

LLMs have revolutionized the way we create visual representations of information. By understanding natural language requests and translating them into Mermaid syntax, these AI tools enable anyone to produce clear, professional diagrams in seconds. This capability removes traditional barriers to visualization, democratizing a powerful communication tool.

Key advantages of using LLMs with Mermaid

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The text-to-diagram workflow is particularly valuable for technical documentation, where diagrams often need frequent updates as systems evolve.

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Versatile diagram types at your fingertips

Mermaid supports numerous diagram types that LLMs can help you create:

Flowcharts

Flowcharts illustrate processes or workflows with connected nodes:

flowchart TD
    A[Start] --> B{Is it raining?}
    B -->|Yes| C[Take umbrella]
    B -->|No| D[Enjoy the sunshine]
    C --> E[Go outside]
    D --> E
    E --> F[End]

Sequence diagrams

Sequence diagrams show interactions between components over time:

sequenceDiagram
    participant User
    participant API
    participant Database

    User->>API: Request data
    API->>Database: Query information
    Database->>API: Return results
    API->>User: Display data

Gantt charts

Gantt charts help visualize project schedules and timelines:

gantt
    title Project Timeline
    dateFormat  YYYY-MM-DD

    section Planning
    Research           :a1, 2023-01-01, 30d
    Design             :a2, after a1, 20d

    section Implementation
    Development        :a3, after a2, 45d
    Testing            :a4, after a3, 15d

    section Deployment
    Release            :a5, after a4, 5d

Entity relationship diagrams

ERDs represent database structures and relationships:

erDiagram
    CUSTOMER ||--o{ ORDER : places
    CUSTOMER {
        string name
        string email
        string address
    }
    ORDER ||--|{ ORDER_ITEM : contains
    ORDER {
        int order_id
        date created_at
        float total_amount
    }
    ORDER_ITEM {
        int item_id
        int quantity
        float price
    }

How to view your diagrams

Conclusion

Generating diagrams with natural language prompts can make your workflows faster and easier. Rather than spending hours in specialized diagramming tools, you can simply describe what you need and have an LLM generate the appropriate Mermaid syntax.

This workflow is particularly powerful when iterating on diagrams. Need to add a new component or change a relationship? Simply describe the change to the LLM, and it will update the diagram code accordingly. This iterative process allows for rapid refinement without the friction of traditional diagramming tools.

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For best results, be specific in your requests to LLMs. Mention the type of diagram you want, key components, and how they should relate to each other. You may do better if you specify where your mermaid diagram will be used, e.g. Obsidian or Notion etc.

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