AsciiFlow

AsciiFlow is a browser-based editor for drawing simple boxes-and-arrows diagrams as plain ASCII. We rate it hold: fine for a one-off sketch you paste into chat or a comment, but not for diagrams you expect to maintain. Use Mermaid (text in git) or Draw.io (formal visuals) instead.

Blurb

Draw ASCII diagrams in your browser.

Summary

When it helps: quick architecture napkin sketches, Slack/PR comments, or README boxes where a PNG feels heavy and you already live in monospace.

Why hold: drawings are not structured source; resizing, diffs, and refactors are painful; output must render in a monospace font or alignment breaks; no real collaboration or export story compared to Diagramming tools you version-control.

Graduate to: Mermaid when the diagram should live in Markdown/docs and evolve with the repo; Draw.io when you need layers, icons, or shareable .drawio files.

Details