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

aajaypanthagani about 6 hours ago 12 commentsRead Article on voicedraw.com

ZH version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

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

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

75% Positive

Analyzed from 253 words in the discussion.

Discussion (12 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

jareds•about 1 hour 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.

ajaypanthagani•about 1 hour 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!

awwaiid•about 2 hours ago

Should probably indicate somewhere purposeful that it is built on Excalidraw

ajaypanthagani•about 2 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.

eranation•about 3 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.

ajaypanthagani•about 2 hours ago

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

faldor20•about 3 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

abdullahkhalids•about 3 hours ago

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

ajaypanthagani•about 3 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?

abdullahkhalids•about 3 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,"

whiteros_e•about 5 hours ago

the diagrams look better than what I would draw myself

ajaypanthagani•about 2 hours ago

Thank you for trying it out! Glad you liked it