For the First Time, AI Was My User
The author created a CLI tool called readable-mermaid that generates readable sequence diagrams from Mermaid files. Uniquely, the tool was designed for AI to use, rather than for human users, as the AI generates the diagrams and calls the tool automatically. This experience shifted the author's perspective on software development, highlighting the evolving relationship between humans and AI in the creation of tools.
- ▪The readable-mermaid tool outputs doc-ready diagrams with improved readability.
- ▪The AI generates the Mermaid diagrams and autonomously calls the readable-mermaid tool.
- ▪This development signifies a shift where the human is no longer the direct user but a beneficiary of the AI's actions.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
For the First Time, AI Was My UserClaire TsaoMay 27, 2026ShareI recently built a small CLI called readable-mermaid. It takes a Mermaid sequence diagram .mmd file — and only sequence diagrams — and outputs a doc-ready diagram image with readable font sizes, proper spacing, and staggered headers. Mermaid’s native output is nearly unreadable once diagrams get complex. While wrapping up the project, writing the README and thinking about how to describe it, something clicked that I hadn’t noticed during development:I built this entire thing for AI. Not for a person.The workflow is: an AI assistant generates a Mermaid sequence diagram as part of writing a design document, calls readable-mermaid to render it, and the output goes straight into the doc. The engineer never runs the command.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Hacker News (AI / LLM).
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