About FractalForm

FractalForm is a text-to-diagram tool. You write a short script describing components, connections, and what happens step by step. The viewer turns it into an animated diagram you can play, pause, and share.

The language reads like Mermaid or PlantUML. If you've used either, you already know most of it. Type client -> api: GET /users and you get two nodes with an animated edge. Add more lines to build up topology, state, narration, and timing.

The editor is forgiving. Components are created automatically from edges, most syntax is optional, and you can rearrange freely. This makes it fast for sketching, prototyping, and taking notes.

Colors, icons, shapes, and groups let you make it look the way you want.

Static diagrams can show a lot, but they flatten everything into one frame. When order matters (which request fires first, what state changes, where failures cascade) you end up explaining the sequence in a meeting or a wall of text.

FractalForm lets you type the system out and see the behavior play back step by step. Timing, ordering, state transitions, and failure paths become visible instead of implied.

The source is a plain text file. You can diff it, review it, and revise it like code.

Use FractalForm when a system is clearer as a sequence than as a single static drawing. Map request flows, pipelines, auth handshakes, deployments, failure paths, and recovery steps as visible changes over time.

Start in the editor or open one of the examples, then refine the script until the playback matches the system you want to explain. The API reference covers the syntax, and the authoring guide gives patterns for generating stronger diagrams.