markmanx

One idea I've been wanting to experiment with for a while now is generating diagrams from text, and this weekend I managed to put together a demo and release it into Isoflow.io (which you can try for free at https://isoflow.io/app, just click the button with the AI icon to start generating).

The idea is simple, but the results are surprisingly decent.

Even though I originally built isoflow to visualise network architectures, there's nothing stopping you from going beyond networks and generating anything you're interested in (provided it can be visualised on a graph). For example, try writing the prompt “Show me the organisational structure of the US political system” and you'll see what I mean.

As a visual learner, I’m already finding this feature quite useful for gaining insight into different types of organisational structures (I've been asking questions from how Amazon is organised to how the Sinaloa Cartel is structured). The output is not yet perfect, but as a first iteration it's already feeling quite useful, and I'm sure there is a lot of improvement to be made when it comes to optimising the prompts I'm using.

Now for the tech side of things.

Text-to-diagram uses OpenAI's GPT API under the hood (no surprises there!). As I mentioned, I've had this experiment in mind for a while now, but it bubbled up to the surface again after I recently read about the new ‘Structured Outputs’ feature which allows you to pass a JSON schema to GPT, so that the response can be formatted to the schema. This is HUGELY useful, and made it a breeze to get GPT talking the same language as Isoflow.

Once I had that, I built a simple interface that would accept a prompt. Nothing complicated, mainly just a textbox, but after generating a few diagrams, I discovered that ChatGPT wasn't great at positioning nodes on the graph. A lot of the time the nodes were too close or too far away from each other, making relationships difficult to see (and something which made the output almost useless). So as a next step, I started experimenting with auto-layout algorithms, mainly force-directed graph drawing.

The force-directed algo essentially sees nodes as physical objects, and connectors as rubber bands, and runs your graph through a physics model. Eventually connected nodes start getting pulled closer together, and the result is a neater layout where everything is more logically spaced out. So now I use GPT just to generate the content, and the layout algo deals with making things look nice.

I'm interested in whether others find this feature useful, especially visual learners like myself, and I'm also interested in what people are using to visualise with it. I will aim to keep this feature free as long as costs don't spiral out of control. Do let me know in the comments what you think.

So it's been around a week since making the initial commit to Isoflow's public repo. So how have things been going so far on the journey to open source?

For one I feel more accountable for getting this project over the line. Isoflow has around 19 stars at the time of writing (at least I know there is some pull on the project, which is something I thrive on). I'm splitting time between isoflow.io the site (which I'm rewriting at the same time - but which will probably be deprioritised), and the open-source diagram editor. There's certainly a sense of my target market shifting from diagram makers to developers, who will care a lot more about the API design. Pacing is super important, as a full-time engineering manager with two kids, I can (and want) to only set aside max a couple of hours a night to work on Isoflow. I'm finding I'm majorly productive over those two hours (although today I've let time get away from me).

All in all, things are moving ahead. I predict between 2 to 4 months to get to a v1. You can track progress on the actual repo (I've just added a very simple roadmap in there as well).

I'll be working to release Isoflow under the MIT license, you can find the start of the open-source project here at https://github.com/markmanx/isoflow (feel free to star!). If you have any tips or questions for me, hit me up on Github for a chat!

Isoflow was a free diagramming tool I launched back in 2020 for sketching network diagrams quickly. It grew quickly after reaching #1 on ProductHunt, and since then I've built it into a small SaaS with a modest customer base.

Over the last year, I’ve hit a ceiling. As a developer I've found it hard to grow Isoflow past the 50 customers it currently has. As an alternative route, I've been thinking a lot more about open sourcing the diagram editor, but couldn't really get a full picture of the benefits until recently. So how do I justify open-sourcing the core of my SaaS business (which I've been working on for over 2 years as a solo developer), and is this the best thing to do for Isoflow's future (spoiler alert: yes!).

For one, contributing to OSS is A Good Thing(TM), and I believe it will ultimately make Isoflow into a better diagramming tool (which is important to me as I believe the future is full of diagramming tools that help us learn faster and grasp ideas more easily). But what really convinced me are the examples I've seen of other diagramming SaaS's that benefit from open sourcing their cores (Excalidraw and React-flow to name a couple). I'd like to live off my project someday, and previously where I saw more drawbacks than gains going open source, I now strongly believe that if Isoflow becomes a success on the OSS side, that success will feed back into the business side (for example, through people finding the repo and then driving through to the SaaS, sponsorship, or custom support requests coming in from companies), and so everyone wins.

I'll be working to release Isoflow under the MIT license, you can find the start of the open-source project here at https://github.com/markmanx/isoflow (feel free to star!).