Beyond Mermaid: PlantUML, D2, and Excalidraw for Technical Diagrams
A practical guide to PlantUML, D2, and Excalidraw — when each tool beats Mermaid, how to control layouts, and how to embed diagrams in your blog with dark/light theme support.
I build the secure, scalable platforms that production agentic AI systems run on. 20+ years across telecommunications and banking — currently building petabyte-scale cloud platforms and writing LangChain agents, MCP integrations, and AI-powered automation on top of them.
A practical guide to PlantUML, D2, and Excalidraw — when each tool beats Mermaid, how to control layouts, and how to embed diagrams in your blog with dark/light theme support.
How to use draw.io MCP and mcp-mermaid to generate architecture diagrams, flowcharts, and sequence diagrams from natural language prompts — and embed them directly in your blog or documentation.
A practitioner comparison of Quarto, Jupyter Book, Pandoc, Typst, and publisher toolchains for writing technical books with testable code examples and multi-format output.
How to replace Word and Google Docs with a Typst source file that compiles to a professional PDF, auto-built by GitHub Actions with git SHA and date stamped on every page.
How to handle snippet extraction pitfalls, integrate Mermaid and Draw.io diagrams, and build a CI pipeline for technical books with infrastructure-dependent code examples.
How I protect 15+ projects across Python, JavaScript, and Rust from supply chain attacks using a three-layer defence: registry-level delays, automated PR scheduling, and lockfile discipline.
Writing since 2011 — 42 posts across 9 years.