Show HN: Turn any workflow diagram into compilable, running and stateful code
68 yaronsc 15 5/14/2025, 5:52:10 PM workflows.diagrid.io ↗
Hi HN folks, I'm a co-creator of the Dapr CNCF project and co-founder of Diagrid. Today we announced a free-to-use web app that takes any form of workflow diagram (UML, BPMN, scribble in your favorite drawing tool or even on paper) and generates code that runs in any IDE and that can be deployed to Kubernetes and other container based systems, based on Dapr's durable execution workflow engine. This essentially allows you to run durable workflows in minutes and leaves out the guesswork for how to structure, code and optimize a code-first workflow app. I'm happy for you to give this a try and provide feedback!
Years ago I tried ArgoUML for generating plone classes/models, but there was a limit to how much custom code could be round-tripped and/or stuffed into UML XML IIRC.
Similarly, no-code tools are all leaky abstractions: they model with UI metaphors only a subset of patterns possible in the target programming language, and so round-trip isn't possible after adding code to the initial or periodic code-generation from the synced abstract class diagram.
Instead, it's possible to generate [UML class] diagrams from minimal actual code. For example, the graph_models management command in Django-extensions generates GraphViz diagrams from subclasses of django.models.Model. With code to diagram workflow (instead of the reverse), you don't need to try and stuff code in the extra_code attr of a modeling syntax so that the generated code can be patched and/or transformed after every code generation from a diagram.
https://django-extensions.readthedocs.io/en/latest/graph_mod...
I wrote something similar to generate (IDEF1X) diagrams from models for the specified waterfall process for an MIS degree capstone course.
It may be easier to prototype object-oriented code with UML class diagrams in mermaid syntax, but actual code shouldn't be that tough to generate diagrams from.
IIRC certain journals like ACM have their own preferred algorithmic pseudocode and LaTeX macros.
Reply to post: "any"?
[0] I accept large checks for allowing setting seeds on-prem.
I see some thing I recognize, diagrams, but nothing else makes sense.
Looks interesting, best of luck!
I'm probably a bit too trusting, but holy hell does that still give a terrible first impression when we have in-browser solutions available to show code demos.
I suppose it's also a general question about the many new AI applications in the market, because these flagship models are getting really good by the day, and seem to be eating up into each and every of those use cases.
Any plans to create systems that allow this to be embedded in existing code bases? It'd be neat to be able to sketch out new systems that your tool could generate code for that seamlessly hooks into an existing system's architecture, especially if it could have a UX similar to how copilot or cursor behave in how they're directly inline with the code.
Wondering how no-code tools like this handle those discrepancies between the super-detailed specs and the real world diagrams
2. (sorry to bring it up but have to ask) how does Diagrid/Dapr compare to Temporal? i browsed your docs but there wasn't much that came up. is Dapr strictly dag based?