Diagram

April 21, 2026 · View on GitHub

Diagram is a full fledged CLI application to generate hand drawn diagrams from ASCII art.

screencast

Main features

Full fledged content editor
Integrated GUI for image view
Zooming/panning support for image inspection
Integrated file management system
Layout customization

Installation

In order to run the application please make sure that Go is installed on your local machine and check if $GOPATH/bin is included into the PATH directory.

Run the following commands to download the project and build the executable.

$ git clone https://github.com/esimov/diagram
$ cd diagram
$ go build

# Start the application
$ diagram

If you've installed Homebrew, you can install the application by running brew install diagram.

A shell script is bundled into the library to mitigate the generation of binary files for the most common operating systems, but take care: different dependencies are needed for different operating systems (see the Dependencies) section. To build the executable file run:

$ make all

Usage

Once you are inside the terminal application you can create, edit or delete the ASCII diagrams. By pressing CTRL+g you can convert the ASCII art into a handwritten diagram. The generated PNG file will be saved into the output folder relative to the current path.

Command Line support

The application also supports the generation of hand drawn diagrams directly from command line without to enter into the CLI application.

$ diagram --help will show the currently supported options:

┌┬┐┬┌─┐┌─┐┬─┐┌─┐┌┬┐
 │││├─┤│ ┬├┬┘├─┤│││
─┴┘┴┴ ┴└─┘┴└─┴ ┴┴ ┴
    Version: 1.1.0

CLI app to convert ASCII arts into hand drawn diagrams.

  -font string
    	Path to the font file (default "/Users/esimov/Projects/Go/src/github.com/esimov/diagram/font/gloriahallelujah.ttf")
  -in string
    	Source
  -out string
    	Destination
  -preview
    	Show the preview window (default true)

CLI Examples

Read input from sample.txt and write image to sample.png showing a preview window with the hand drawn diagram:

diagram -in sample.txt -out sample.png

Read input from sample.txt and write image to sample.png, and exit immediately without showing a preview window:

diagram -in sample.txt -out sample.png -preview=false

Generate diagram as above but use a font at a different location:

diagram -in sample.txt -out sample.png -preview=false -font /path/to/my/font/MyHandwriting.ttf

Key bindings

Key	Action
`F1`	Show/hide help panel
`Tab`	Jump to the next panel
`Shift+Tab`	Jump to the previous panel
`Ctrl+l`	Change layout color
`Ctrl+s`	Open the Save diagram modal
`Ctrl+s`	Save diagram
`Ctrl+g`	Preview the generated ASCII diagram (zooming/panning)
`PageDown`	Scroll down the editor content
`PageUp`	Scroll up the editor content
`Ctrl+x`	Clear the editor content
`Ctrl+z`	Restore the editor content
`Home`	Jump to the line start
`End`	Jump to the line end
`Delete/Backspace`	Delete diagram
`Ctrl+q`	Quit