About FractalForm

FractalForm is a plain-text language for system diagrams. You write a script that describes components, connections, state, and what happens over time. The renderer turns it into a diagram you can inspect, play, pause, and share.

A script can be as small as one edge: client -> api: GET /users.

FractalForm is meant to feel familiar from the first line. Arrows create relationships. Components can be declared when you want more control. Groups, shapes, icons, tags, and state let the diagram become more precise without turning it into a drawing tool.

Quick Notation provides a faster path for sketching. Its indentation, compact component markers, and simple connections let you capture a system almost as freely as writing an outline, while the full language remains available when the diagram needs animation, state, or more precise control.

The source stays plain text, so it can be reviewed, diffed, generated, revised, and shared like code. A FractalForm diagram can stand on its own as a static system diagram, but it does not have to stop there.

Where FractalForm shines is showing how a system changes. Request lifecycles, authentication handshakes, deployments, retries, failure paths, and recovery steps often need sequence and state to make sense. The renderer can show those changes with motion, timing, overlays, notes, artifacts, structured content, and timeline controls.

Start in the editor, browse the reference, or use the authoring guide to generate diagrams with an AI assistant.