Reladraw
A diagram language where you decide where to place things
Details
- External ID
- 49858513
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Reladraw
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Sept. 26, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 407
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9904306220095693
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 30, 2026, 5:01 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 30, 2026, 5:01 p.m.
Description
I love making diagrams to help understand, plan, etc. However, the options are (A) auto-placement languages like Mermaid or Graphviz (which don't let me decide how the diagram looks), or (B) software like Draw.io which are powerful but are very time consuming (and inefficient for agents to manipulate).I wanted to have the benefits of both, where you can define a diagram in a diagram language, but also retain a high degree of control over what the diagram looks like.I also wanted this to work well for humans and agents.On the Github link, there's a playground where you can try it out without installation. There's also instructions for a simple npm install and for installing a skill you can use with Claude or other agents.
Enrichment
- Theme
- 3D modeling and visual design tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- diagramming language for developers
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes Building a custom DSL parser and renderer that positions diagram nodes based on explicit coordinates or relative constraints is a well-scoped project an AI assistant can build quickly with web technologies (e.g., SVG, Canvas, or React Flow).
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Mermaid, D2, tikz
Concerns raised: Dependency on Node runtime, Need for a whole new language vs extending Mermaid, Bug with arrow curvature on specific edge placements
Feature requests: Output calculated positions as JSON via CLI, Edges drawn with right angles, Decouple layout engine from bundled renderer, Implement tikz-like syntax without LaTeX
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 51 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #3 of 52 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 330 days after the earliest competitor.
- Graph2agent; Mermaid diagrams, explained for agents · hn · 2026-08-10 · 7 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Line9 · hn · 2026-08-06 · 87 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Vellum, the best diagram editor you'll ever use · hn · 2026-09-21 · 25 upvotes · similarity 0.47
- Geomatic · hn · 2026-05-25 · 75 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Agent Draw: An agent draws while you talk, built on TLDraw · hn · 2026-07-06 · 53 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Better Graphs · hn · 2026-06-28 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- VoiceDraw · hn · 2026-06-16 · 49 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Grafly.io · hn · 2026-03-16 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.39
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.