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Show HN: Whiteboard (YC W26) – An open-source IDE for thoughtful software design

424 points · 143 comments · sidharthkmenon

  1. solatic · · focus · HN ↗
    How do you compare to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;likec4.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;likec4.dev&#x2F; and <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;erode.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;erode.dev&#x2F; , which are currently fully open-source and community driven?

    C4 gives the text-based representation needed for LLMs to generate and maintain large architecture diagrams - why not build off that heritage?

    1. d0mine · · focus · HN ↗
      It may be even simpler: plain markdown files that explain architecture including C4 diagrams generated from text using plantuml (automated via invoke&#x2F;fabric&#x2F;whatever). Plantuml includes C4 in stdlib <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;plantuml-stdlib&#x2F;C4-PlantUML" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;plantuml-stdlib&#x2F;C4-PlantUML
      1. ketan_around · · focus · HN ↗
        Yeah, haha funnily enough I&#x27;m a huge fan of both C4 and plantuml. We actually do have an experimental &#x27;software map&#x27; feature, turned off in settings by default, which draws a hierarchical &#x2F; C4-based architecture diagram of your codebase (even highlighting the nodes which changed in the PR!) Warning, it is a little rough around the edges at the moment.

        As far as plantuml&#x2F;graphviz&#x2F;mermaid&#x2F;similar UML tools, it&#x27;s really cool stuff, I agree. My issue is that those tools are mainly built to render static diagrams (output to svg, png, etc.) Some eg mermaid are perhaps extensible for interactivity, but it&#x27;s a little wonky. I think a lot of the value of whiteboard comes from the interactivity -- being able to click on a node to see the underlying code, being able to go through a guided walkthrough of a given flow, etc.

        But using their UML authoring format is certainly worth looking into, since the LLMs are already so well-versed in it. i&#x27;ll put some thought into this!

        1. euroderf · · focus · HN ↗
          I would think that a package that &quot;draws a hierarchical &#x2F; C4-based architecture diagram of your codebase&quot; has the potential to become a de facto standard lickety-split if it&#x27;s made available as a freebie to draw people to your software. You don&#x27;t see C4&#x27;s on Github because who wants to dig into how to use a tool to make a one-off ?
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