@levi-liu

Levi Liu

@levi-liu

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

Austin, USAJoined May 2026

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Diagrams as Code — Beauty Diagram Blogbeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev7 posts

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LLLevi Liubeauty-diagram.hashnode.dev21h ago · 10 min read

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

LLLevi Liubeauty-diagram.hashnode.devJun 12 · 10 min read

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

LLLevi Liubeauty-diagram.hashnode.devJun 5 · 8 min read

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

LLLevi Liubeauty-diagram.hashnode.devJun 5 · 10 min read

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

LLLevi Liubeauty-diagram.hashnode.devMay 21 · 4 min read

Why Your GitHub README Diagrams Look Amateur (and the 4 Fixes That Take 10 Minutes)

TL;DR If your README diagrams look like every other open-source repo's, that's because they all use the same four Mermaid defaults. Switching to theme: 'base' plus tuning four properties takes under t

Levi Liu

About

Available for

Levi Liu's blogs

Recently published

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

Why Your GitHub README Diagrams Look Amateur (and the 4 Fixes That Take 10 Minutes)

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Levi Liu

About

Available for

Levi Liu's blogs

Recently published

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

Why Your GitHub README Diagrams Look Amateur (and the 4 Fixes That Take 10 Minutes)