I would like to share my thoughts behind the creation of DrillFlow. Nowadays my job shifted from implementing of solutions to planning/understanding/explaining software solutions. So i got used to create diagrams on the fly while explaining or listening to others. My problem was to fit the most important abstractions and also details on the same canvas and keep it still readable. The tools i used before made it hard to me to build hierarchial structures without splitting one diagram into many and keep track on how they belong together.
DrillFlow is built on the idea of drill-down as the primary structure. Any node/shape on the canvas can own its own sub-diagram with the possibility to deep dive via double-click. Breadcrumbs at the top and a node tree show you where you are in the hierarchy at any time and let you navigate freely between levels in the diagrams. The depth is not limited since the document is a flat map of diagrams with parent/child relationships.
Some decisions might interest you:
- Local-first. Document live in your browser (IndexedDB). Nothing goes to my server unless you create a share link explicitly. It is possible to manage/edit/search multiple diagrams locally. You do not need an account to use the whole editor. The editor (as you see it today) stays free. The only thing i would charge for later are some cloud integrations and convenience functionality.
- There are no analytics and no cookies, except of the one the app needs to work. This means that i have no idea how many people use this editor at the moment and I rely completely on the feedback that is sent to me.
- Infrastructure is hosted in EU completely. Technology stack is kept boring on purpose: React + TypeScript for frontend and FastAPI + SQLite for the backend, everything running on a Hetzner VPS behind Caddy.
I am happy to go into the drill-down data model or the deployment setup. Feel free to ask or give feedback - positive or negative - i would really appreciate both and feature ideas for sure as well!
So far many improvements like import/export of Mermaid , draw.io and excalidraw flowchars or adding of new shortcuts, even templates and the possibility to embed diagrams as iframe came in just because of people who gave their feedback :)