Flowcharts, written rather than drawn

Straight answer first: there is no canvas here and nothing to drag. You describe the flowchart in a sentence, or bring a file you already have, and it is drawn for you — on your own brand. If you want to place every shape by hand, draw.io is free and better at that. If you have the numbers already, read on.

Try it with this

Paste this into the description box above — it is the example that produces the worked flowchart in the gallery.

An invoice arrives; over 5,000 goes to manual review, otherwise auto-approve; both end posted.

What this does that a flowchart editor does not

An editor gives you a canvas and expects you to arrange it. That is the right tool when the arrangement IS the thinking. It is the wrong tool when you already know the process and just need the picture — and it is a terrible tool when you need forty of them to look like one set. Three differences matter here. The layout is deterministic, so the same description gives the same chart every run, which is what you want when the diagram is in a document somebody reviews. Nothing is dropped to make a chart fit: generators that redraw with a model work against a fixed ladder and quietly lose branches past roughly two dozen boxes, and a flowchart missing a branch is wrong rather than simpler. And a decision is measured as the rhombus it is actually drawn as, so long labels do not spill out of the diamond that holds them.

What comes out

Drawn by this pipeline, not picked to flatter it.

What you get out

SVG and PNG on any plan. PowerPoint with real editable shapes and live text — not a picture of a chart you cannot fix a typo in — plus our own .dgm format, which is plain text you can edit and re-import. Every conversion returns a ledger saying what changed, because you know your own diagram and would notice anyway.

Questions people actually ask

Is it free?

Converting a flowchart you already have is free and needs no account — drop in a Visio, draw.io, Mermaid, Excalidraw or tldraw file. Writing one from a description costs a model call, so that half needs a free account.

What do the flowchart symbols mean?

A rectangle is a step, a diamond is a decision, a rounded box is a start or an end, and a cylinder is stored data. You do not have to pick them — a step phrased as a question is drawn as a decision. There is a fuller guide in the journal.

Will it read my Visio flowchart?

Yes, .vsdx directly, including the ones Lucidchart exports. Your original arrangement is kept when you drew it deliberately; only a source with no geometry at all is laid out from scratch.

Can I edit it afterwards?

Click any shape to change its type or colour. The PowerPoint export carries real editable shapes with live text, so a typo can be fixed in the deck without coming back here. The .dgm export is plain text you can edit and re-import.

How big can a flowchart get?

There is no cap and nothing is dropped — the canvas grows instead. That is the main difference from AI flowchart generators, which mostly stop around two dozen boxes.

Worth reading next

• Flowchart symbols, and what each one actually means

Other diagram types

histogram maker swimlane diagram process flow diagram pie chart maker venn diagram maker gantt chart maker org chart maker er diagram tool

All 53 types have a worked example in the gallery.