AI diagram generator

AI sequence diagram generator.

For when the question is not what the components are but in what order they talk, and what happens when step four fails.

Download for macOS
v0.1.33 · .dmg · Apple Silicon & Intel
Signed & notarized by Apple · opens without a Gatekeeper warning
sha256 698955a0187bc039f4c74f5d05a9f10fbb27376a45788a0a241d1326b73873c7
Download for Windows instead
$curl -fsSL https://lucidtrain.com/install.sh | sh

What a sequence diagram shows

Participants across the top, time running downward, and messages between them as horizontal arrows. It is the right diagram whenever ordering is the thing you are trying to explain: an authentication handshake, a checkout, a retry path, a distributed transaction with compensation. It is the wrong diagram for showing what a system is made of, because it says nothing about structure.

How Lucid Train draws one

Describe what you want, or point it at a repository. The agent emits a semantic graph of nodes and edges with no coordinates, and the ELK layout engine computes positions and orthogonal routing. That separation is the reason the output cannot come back with boxes overlapping or arrows crossing through cards, which is the characteristic failure when a language model is asked to place things on a canvas itself. It also means editing is editing the graph: change a component and the layout re-solves rather than drifting out of alignment.

The failure branch is the useful half

Almost every hand-drawn sequence diagram shows the happy path and stops. The interesting content is what happens when a participant does not respond: whether the caller retries, how it knows the operation was not applied twice, and which participant is left holding inconsistent state. Drawing the alternative flow alongside the main one is where a sequence diagram earns its place in a design doc.

From an API spec or from code

An OpenAPI document or route definitions supply the participants and the operation names accurately, so the diagram uses real endpoint names rather than approximations. The ordering is not in either source, since a spec describes endpoints and not journeys, so that part comes from your description.

Local, offline, your models

It runs as a desktop application. Against a local Ollama model the whole thing works offline with no API key and no telemetry, which is the practical difference from every browser-based diagram tool: your architecture never leaves the machine.

Sequence diagram notation

ElementWhat it means
LifelineA participant, drawn as a vertical line down the page
Activation barThe period a participant is doing work
Solid arrowA synchronous call, the caller waits
Dashed arrowA return, or an asynchronous message
Open arrowheadAsynchronous: the sender does not block
alt fragmentAlternative paths, such as success and failure
loop fragmentA repeated interaction, such as polling or retry
Cross at the end of a lifelineThe participant is destroyed or the connection closes

Try it

shell
$ Draw a sequence diagram for OAuth authorization code flow with PKCE, including the failure path when the token exchange is rejected.
FAQ

Questions

Can it generate a sequence diagram from code?

It reads call paths and produces a draft, and this is genuinely harder than structural diagramming: the real ordering depends on runtime conditions the code does not fully determine. Expect to correct it, which is quick since you are editing a graph.

Does it export Mermaid sequence syntax?

Diagrams export as SVG, PNG and Excalidraw scenes. If you specifically want Mermaid source to commit alongside code, ask the agent for Mermaid and it will write it, which is a different output from the canvas.

Sequence diagram or flowchart?

Sequence when several participants interact over time; flowchart when one process makes decisions. Using a flowchart for a multi-service interaction loses the participant boundaries, which are usually the point.

Can it show retries and timeouts?

Yes, as loop and alternative fragments. Those are worth drawing explicitly: retry behaviour is where most distributed bugs live and it is almost never in the original diagram.

Related