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Comment by sghiassy

9 days ago

LLMs can understand ASCII diagrams

8 comments

sghiassy

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raincole  9 days ago

LLMs nowadays can understand png diagrams too.

  • elxr  9 days ago

    But not all CLIs handle pngs as easily as a text diagram. Syncing images is also multiple times slower.

    png diagrams should never be the default.

  • trcf23  9 days ago

    They can’t update it though. In docs it makes sense to use that as a basis and have the Llm update it when needed

    • satvikpendem  9 days ago

      Mermaid diagrams are even better because you don't waste characters on the visual representation but rather the relationships between them. It's the difference between

          graph TD
            User -->|Enters Credentials| Frontend[React App]
            Frontend -->|POST /auth| API[NodeJS Service]
            API -->|Query| DB[(PostgreSQL)]
            API --x|Invalid| Frontend
            DB -->|User Object| API
            API -->|JWT| Frontend

      and

          +-------+           +-------------+           +---------+
    |  User |           | React App   |           | NodeJS  |
    +-------+           +-------------+           +---------+
        |                      |                       |
        |  Enters Creds        |       POST /auth      |
        |--------------------->|---------------------->|
        |                      |                       |
        |      Invalid         |    <-- [X] Error -----|
        |<---------------------|                       |
        |                      |       Query DB        |
        |                      |---------------------->| [ DB ]

      Plus while an LLM can understand relationships via pure ASCII or an image, it's just easier to give it the relationship data directly.

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