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

[ajaypanthagani]

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

[jareds]

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]

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]

Should probably indicate somewhere purposeful that it is built on Excalidraw

[ajaypanthagani]

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.

[awwaiid]

Yes -- there are also links if you click into the lower-right help button to the excalidraw documentation, blog, etc.

[ldubinets]

Cool! I built a similar tool at https://shimmerdiagrams.com

Would be curious to connect and compare notes! Yours is probably way better, I had built mine as a prototype and specifically interested in running all models local and in browser.

[Cilvic]

Cool to see that you did transcription AND LLM for the diagram with "in-browser" / local.

Tangent: But I'm wondering whether there would be something from the browser side to enforce this?

Like a sandbox so that my browser allows me to launch this via "download" only so that after I download everything there is no way for the website to get any of my data.

As a (non-technical) user what kind of guarantee do I have that the prompts, transcript etc. are treated only local?

[ajaypanthagani]

Hi, your tool looks cool. Sure would love to connect.You can reach out to me at [e-mail]

[eranation]

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]

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

[faldor20]

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

[YassineKaibi]

it's not for drawing anything, it's for drawing diagrams (like flowcharts) specifically.

[abdullahkhalids]

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

[ajaypanthagani]

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]

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,"

[vivzkestrel]

- stack?

- how lomg did it take you to build this?

- how many of you made this?

- how did you get the idea?

[YassineKaibi]

great tool! definitely prefer typing though, and it really reminds of excalidraw.

[whiteros_e]

the diagrams look better than what I would draw myself

[ajaypanthagani]

Thank you for trying it out! Glad you liked it