What remaid is, and what it is not

remaid takes a small text DSL and renders it as an animated SVG. The animation is a first-class part of the language, not an afterthought — you describe the static shape of a system and the way data moves through it in the same file.

Most diagram tools sit at one of two extremes: static-but-typable (Mermaid, PlantUML, D2) or animated-but-visual (After Effects, Rive, Figma). The first kind is great for pull requests and version control but cannot show what a system actually does over time. The second kind is great for explaining behaviour but does not survive a code review.

remaid sits in the gap. The DSL diffs cleanly in git. The output works as a plain <img> tag in any markdown renderer or documentation site. The animation runs without JavaScript — it is native SMIL inside the SVG file.

It is good for:

• Architecture diagrams that show traffic flow.
• Tech-blog posts and DevRel content with embedded animations.
• Internal docs explaining failover, replication, retry storms.
• System onboarding materials.

It is not good for:

• Sequence diagrams (lifelines + activation bars). That is a different rendering model. Use Mermaid for those.
• Generic flowcharts with decision diamonds. remaid models nodes that process data and edges that carry data — there is no if/else primitive.
• Whiteboarding or freeform sketching. The DSL is for committed designs, not exploration.
• Anything 3D. Everything is 2D SVG.

remaid is open source under the Apache 2.0 license. The full source lives on GitHub.