excalidraw

name	excalidraw
description	Generate Excalidraw diagrams from a compact DSL with brand-resolved colors. Use for boxes/arrows flow diagrams.

feinbild — Excalidraw diagrams

Quick Start

/excalidraw flow.exc.dsl

feinbild is a command on your PATH. Expand a .exc.dsl to .excalidraw (brand colors resolved), then render to PNG.

feinbild excalidraw expand flow.exc.dsl --brand feinschliff   # -> flow.excalidraw
feinbild excalidraw render flow.excalidraw                    # -> flow.png
feinbild verify flow.excalidraw                               # lint: overflow, overlap, label collision

Primitives: box ellipse diamond dot line zone lane text and arrow <from> -> <to> [label:"…"]. Set theme dark in the DSL for a dark canvas. --brand selects the brand; render is brand-agnostic.

Default to clean

• ≤3 arrows per flow. More than that means the layout is wrong — re-chunk or pick another visualization.
• No text over shapes. Labels live inside boxes or adjacent via a connector — never on a border.
• Aspect-aware. Default 16:9 (1920×1080). If the brief specifies a target slot match it; otherwise embeds get squished.
• Metaphor, not clutter. Briefs saying "messy" / "tangled" / "stitched" describe a CONCEPT — convey via composition (overlap, dim color, tight grouping), not by drawing actual chaos.

References

• Methodology — argue-not-display patterns, depth assessment, hierarchy & arrow-routing rules
• DSL syntax — full grammar: primitives, zone/lane, arrow flags, ports, colors, text levels
• Design system — audience-calibrated complexity, visual vocabulary, 10 arrow-discipline principles
• Examples — fan-out / pipeline-with-decision / multi-zoom blueprints
• Deep examples — large layered architectures (MCU/Linux stacks, OTA flows, audience-contrast pairs); source DSL in examples/
• Eval fixtures live in evals/evals.json; reusable DSL fixtures in examples/*.exc.dsl

Brand override

Override: inline @brand <name>, then --brand, then FEINSCHLIFF_BRAND. expand resolves brand colors; render is brand-agnostic.