DiagramIDE
a Rust GUI to Compose Diagrams via Tcl, Prolog, and Pikchr
Details
- External ID
- 47183427
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- DiagramIDE
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Feb. 27, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 6
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.28099730458221023
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I built DiagramIDE because I wanted a more modular way to handle diagramming-as-code. It’s a Rust-based GUI (EGUI) where you can split logic, data, and rendering into separate windows. Instead of one giant DSL file, you can script components in Tcl, define relationships in Prolog, and pipe the results into Pikchr for the final render.Fair warning: it’s an early alpha and still quite rough around the edges. I’ve been dogfooding it for my own work so it’s definitely functional but expect unexpected.Shortest way to try it out is a compiled binary release: https://github.com/exlee/pikchr.pl/releases/tag/latest
Enrichment
- Theme
- Claude integrations and coding agents
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- gui for composing diagrams with tcl and prolog
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial Embedding three completely distinct language interpreters/engines (Tcl, a Prolog engine, and Pikchr) and bridging them with a dynamic egui GUI in Rust goes beyond typical vibe coding boilerplate and quickly hits tricky FFI and multi-language data-piping bugs.
What it would actually take: A working system requires integrating Rust with embedded Tcl (via FFI or a pure-Rust interpreter), a logic engine (such as Scryer Prolog or a custom solver), and the Pikchr C/Rust renderer. Data structures must be cleanly marshaled across the boundaries: Tcl scripts generating relations for Prolog to solve, which output declarative diagrams rendered by Pikchr inside an egui/wgpu immediate-mode loop. This demands solid knowledge of multi-paradigm programming, FFI bindings, and custom interpreter execution pipelines.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 62 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #53 of 63 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 116 days after the earliest competitor.
- PyMOL-RS · hn · 2026-02-26 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Reladraw · hn · 2026-09-26 · 407 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Ripl · hn · 2026-03-19 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Kurvengefahr · hn · 2026-07-12 · 20 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- SHDL · hn · 2026-01-28 · 48 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- Interactive Common Lisp: An Enhanced REPL · hn · 2025-12-14 · 101 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- I made a Rust Terminal UI for OpenSnitch, a Linux application firewall · hn · 2025-11-21 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- Blockframe · ph · 2026-09-21 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.36
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
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