grafli

Grafli is a keyboard-driven diagramming tool designed for users who prefer working with plain text and efficient, mouse-free workflows. It targets people who think and work faster with keyboard commands, such as developers or those involved in technical documentation, code review, system architecture, and design brainstorming. The tool emphasizes a streamlined experience, offering four primary modes—Select, Rect, Text, and Connect—enabling users to construct diagrams entirely via keyboard, drawing on modal editing and familiar patterns for those with vim muscle memory.

Diagrams in grafli are built from a concise set of primitives, including boxes, arrows, and notes, which can be combined to create anything from simple sketches to complex architecture diagrams. grafli file format is line-oriented plain text, making it human-readable, easy to edit in any text editor, and suitable for version control with meaningful diffs. This format is also designed to be compatible with AI workflows: large language models can read, write, and modify diagrams, and the tool can ship its diagramming skill into AI agents such as Claude Code, OpenCode, or Codex CLI with a single command.

Grafli supports advanced annotation capabilities. Notes can be tagged with conventions that highlight tasks, questions, discussions, code, and markdown, each rendered with distinct visual cues. Code-mode notes display pseudocode with syntax highlighting for function signatures, flow, and contract keywords, along with clickable references to file locations. Markdown-mode notes support a subset of GitHub-flavored Markdown, including headings, lists, checkboxes, blockquotes, and links. Semantic edge labels and markdown resources can be attached to elements, with editing supported through a bundled markdown editor, textli.

For navigating and understanding complex diagrams, grafli provides features like subgraph focus, complexity heatmaps, minimap overviews, and various view toggles to highlight or dim diagram elements. Navigation is further enhanced by jump labels, fuzzy search, graph traversal shortcuts, hierarchy traversal, zooming, viewport history, and the ability to link nodes to sub-diagrams in separate files. Guided tours can be created by saving bookmarks and flows, which can be presented fullscreen or exported as slide PDFs, with bookmarks anchored to item IDs for stability during diagram edits.