# Reladraw

28 Hacker News commenters recommended Reladraw and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as diagram-as-code where you specify relative positions instead of exact coordinates. Critics mention bugs and an LLM-generated README.

## Why people recommend it

- Relative positioning without manual coordinates (7 comments): "I'm hoping for most flowcharts, mind maps, etc. the relative positioning is enough to get what you want without fiddling too much!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49860623)) "Reladraw aims to be easy for an agent (or human) to edit (like Mermaid) but have the expressiveness and positioning" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49863327)) "The idea with Reladraw is that a human or agent could just state "I want this node to the right of this other one"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49860253))
- Fills a gap in diagram tools (4 comments): "This is a wonderful idea that fills a gap that has caused me much pain!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49863699)) "I always wanted this kind of tool, it’s a great idea" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864932)) "I love it, and I wish it was part of Mermaid" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49860294))
- Useful in AI coding workflows (2 comments): "prompting a frontier model to make a svg diagram works so well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49865711)) "This is very needed in the AI coding age!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49861781))

## What people warn about

- Bugs in themes and rendering (3 comments): "there's a bug when switching themes in the web ui in Safari" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864296)) "leaves the boxes black and the text unreadable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49868091)) "Seems a little buggy, I added this line" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49860544))
- Appears LLM-generated or Claude-coded (2 comments): "a project which appears to be fully coded by Claude worthy of a Show HN post" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49870898)) "The README looks LLM generated." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49863408))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mermaid](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mermaid.md): 93 recommend
- [SQL to ER diagram tool](https://hackerapproved.com/p/free-sql-to-er-diagram-tool.md): 27 recommend
- [D2 diagram language](https://hackerapproved.com/p/d2.md): 21 recommend
- [PlantUML](https://hackerapproved.com/p/plantuml.md): 16 recommend
- [Graphviz](https://hackerapproved.com/p/graphviz.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Reladraw", https://hackerapproved.com/p/reladraw/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).