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I use excalidraw to manage my diagrams for my blog

by mlysk on 3/30/2026, 7:17:06 AM

https://blog.lysk.tech/excalidraw-frame-export/

Comments

by: lnenad

I love diagramming, but I genuinely don&#x27;t understand how people can use these wonky looking tools. It looks off, I had to make my own[1] to create something that&#x27;s easy to use and looks good&#x2F;normal.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grafly.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grafly.io</a>

3/30/2026, 9:47:00 AM


by: Jnr

Cool, I did a similar thing last week.<p>I made a custom Payload CMS block that allows to create and update excalidraw diagrams within the CMS. It supports dark and light mode switching and rendering inline or as external SVG.<p>And last weekend I added MCP server with Oauth so I could generate and update those diagrams and add them to post drafts from Claude. I think it is more convenient since I don&#x27;t have to use API billing model and don&#x27;t need to build a custom UI.<p>Here is an example post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.janhouse.lv&#x2F;blog&#x2F;network&#x2F;self-hosting-tailscale-derp-headscale" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.janhouse.lv&#x2F;blog&#x2F;network&#x2F;self-hosting-tailscale-...</a><p>Originally I wanted to sync posts from Obsidian but it doesn&#x27;t have good enough image handling which I sometimes need and I needed extra metadata to unlist or password protect or noindex some posts.

3/30/2026, 9:29:32 AM


by: walthamstow

Excalidraw has proliferated quite widely in my company since we got Claude Code. Its a shame the default font is ugly, childish and inaccessible.

3/30/2026, 8:52:53 AM


by: darshanmakwana

I simply just draw in excalidraw and take a ss and past it in my obsidian note, I have a setup that automatically parses posts from my vault and then pushes them to my site

3/30/2026, 8:22:04 AM


by: wdroz

You can also bootstrap your initial schema with LLMs with the excalidraw MCP &quot;app&quot; [0]. But MCP &quot;apps&quot;[1] are quite new and not very well supported yet.<p>[0] -- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;excalidraw&#x2F;excalidraw-mcp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;excalidraw&#x2F;excalidraw-mcp</a><p>[1] -- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;modelcontextprotocol.io&#x2F;extensions&#x2F;apps&#x2F;overview" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;modelcontextprotocol.io&#x2F;extensions&#x2F;apps&#x2F;overview</a>

3/30/2026, 8:05:45 AM


by: dewey

Everyone does that these days and they are becoming AI tells like the em-dash or the blue-glow of the early AI generated images that everyone added to their blog posts.

3/30/2026, 8:59:57 AM


by: gethly

Same. I started using it for Gethly blog. It&#x27;s not perfect, some things make me crazy but overall it is better than draw.io that I used to use before. Excalidraw also has these great styles that just feel right :)

3/30/2026, 7:58:43 AM


by: emil-lp

Should be <i>Show HN</i>.<p>Now it reads like an ad for some extension to a program I&#x27;ve never heard about.

3/30/2026, 7:48:34 AM