Show HN: VoiceDraw – Talk system design out loud, the diagrams draw themselves

Posted by ajaypanthagani 13 hours ago

I was frustated by having to draw system design diagrams by hand when discussing it with my team mates or in an interview. So I thought "Wouldn't it be great if someone draws it for me, while I think out loud?".

That is when I came up with VoiceDraw. You can just think out loud or discuss your system architecture with a friend/interviewer, the diagrams are automatically drawn along with your reasoning, open questions and tradeoffs beautifully written on to the side.

Demo Video: https://youtu.be/36PgHKSuccE

Comments

Comment by ldubinets 4 hours ago

Cool! I built a similar tool at https://shimmerdiagrams.com

Would be curious to connect and compare notes! Yours is probably way better, I had built mine as a prototype and specifically interested in running all models local and in browser.

Comment by jareds 9 hours ago

As a blind software developer this looks interesting, but the output descriptions are not useful. I asked it "create a diagram for a rest api with a database, app server, and cache." The diagrams alt text was "609 / 100k tokens used" The text it returned was "Created a simple REST API architecture with three core components: a web app server, a cache layer, and a database. Organized them into logical tiers." If it can generate the diagram it would be nice if the alt text was a detailed description of the diagram.

Comment by ajaypanthagani 9 hours ago

Great point, I hadn't considered this use case. I've added richer, screen-reader-friendly diagram descriptions to the roadmap. Thanks for the feedback!

Comment by awwaiid 9 hours ago

Should probably indicate somewhere purposeful that it is built on Excalidraw

Comment by ajaypanthagani 9 hours ago

It is actually listed on the sites privacy policy.

https://voicedraw.com/privacy#:~:text=Apple%20for%20Safari)....

Feedback taken though, will explore ways to make it more visible.

Comment by awwaiid 7 hours ago

Yes -- there are also links if you click into the lower-right help button to the excalidraw documentation, blog, etc.

Comment by eranation 10 hours ago

Great idea! Just quick feedback. Asked it to “Draw a pelican riding a bicycle.”

On mobile the response (not a technical diagram) wasn’t visible, initially thought it just didn’t work).

Asked it then to draw a diagram for an X replacement, it nailed it.

Comment by ajaypanthagani 10 hours ago

Thanks for trying it out, noted on the response toast visibility on mobile. Will fix it asap.

Comment by faldor20 10 hours ago

It's a great idea and something I would absolutely use. However I can't get it to draw anything at all. I just get one single box or some messy rubbish

Comment by YassineKaibi 5 hours ago

it's not for drawing anything, it's for drawing diagrams (like flowcharts) specifically.

Comment by ajaypanthagani 10 hours ago

[flagged]

Comment by vivzkestrel 5 hours ago

- stack?

- how lomg did it take you to build this?

- how many of you made this?

- how did you get the idea?

Comment by YassineKaibi 5 hours ago

great tool! definitely prefer typing though, and it really reminds of excalidraw.

Comment by abdullahkhalids 11 hours ago

I am getting a "can’t connect to the server at voicedraw.com" error

Comment by ajaypanthagani 11 hours ago

Thanks for reporting. Could you share your browser, OS, and country? Also, did voicedraw.com fail to load entirely in the browser, or were you able to open the site before seeing the error?

Comment by abdullahkhalids 10 hours ago

macOS Tahoe, Firefox 151.0.4, Canada.

It's a connection error, so closer to "did voicedraw.com fail to load entirely in the browser,"

Comment by whiteros_e 12 hours ago

the diagrams look better than what I would draw myself

Comment by ajaypanthagani 10 hours ago

Thank you for trying it out! Glad you liked it

Comment by levi840714 38 minutes ago

[flagged]