@levi-liu

Levi Liu

@levi-liuAustin, USAJoined May 2026

Building Beauty Diagram. Writing weekly on diagrams, docs, and dev ergonomics.

About

Nothing here yet.

Available for

Nothing here yet.

Levi Liu's blogs

Diagrams as Code — Beauty Diagram Blogbeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev8 posts

Beautify Mermaid Diagrams in Obsidian and VS Code (Without Leaving Your Editor)

TL;DR Mermaid is great until you preview it in the editor you actually write in. Obsidian and VS Code (plus Cursor / Windsurf / VSCodium) all ship a default pastel renderer that fights the rest of you

Aug 3 · 10 min readbeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev

Beautify Every Diagram in Your Markdown Docs with One Command

Disclosure: I work on Beauty Diagram, the CLI used in the examples below. Everything in this post is doable with open-source tooling alone; the CLI is one way to make it ergonomic. TL;DR A typical d

Jun 23 · 10 min readbeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev

Generate Mermaid from Plain English with AI (CLI Walkthrough)

TL;DR You already know flowchart TD cold. You don't know sequenceDiagram participant aliases, erDiagram cardinality glyphs, or which state diagram dialect Mermaid is on this year. This post is a walkt

Jun 12 · 10 min readbeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev

Embed Mermaid in Notion: The 4 Working Approaches in 2026

--> TL;DR Notion has native Mermaid in code blocks now, but the default look is the same pastel render you've seen everywhere, and there's no theme override. This post walks through the four approach

Jun 5 · 8 min readbeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev

Mermaid vs PlantUML in 2026: Which to Pick for Engineering Docs

TL;DR Mermaid won the README and the markdown ecosystem; PlantUML won the engineering whiteboard and the IDE. In 2026 they're still the two serious "diagram as code" formats, and which one you should

Jun 5 · 10 min readbeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev

Levi Liu

About

Available for

Levi Liu's blogs

Beautify Mermaid Diagrams in Obsidian and VS Code (Without Leaving Your Editor)

Beautify Every Diagram in Your Markdown Docs with One Command

Generate Mermaid from Plain English with AI (CLI Walkthrough)

Embed Mermaid in Notion: The 4 Working Approaches in 2026

Mermaid vs PlantUML in 2026: Which to Pick for Engineering Docs

Search Hashnode

Levi Liu

About

Available for

Levi Liu's blogs

Beautify Mermaid Diagrams in Obsidian and VS Code (Without Leaving Your Editor)

Beautify Every Diagram in Your Markdown Docs with One Command

Generate Mermaid from Plain English with AI (CLI Walkthrough)

Embed Mermaid in Notion: The 4 Working Approaches in 2026

Mermaid vs PlantUML in 2026: Which to Pick for Engineering Docs