Martin Fowler
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Building Custom Tooling with LLMs
Tools that treat diagrams as code, such as PlantUML, are invaluable
for communicating complex system behavior. But Unmesh
Joshi often wished for an extension to walk through these
diagrams step-by-step. Yet, extending established tools like PlantUML
often involves significant initial setup - parsing hooks, build scripts,
viewer code, packaging - enough “plumbing” to deter rapid prototyping.He narrates now he used an LLM to build a small extension adding step-wise
playback to PlantUML sequence diagrams. This illustrates how
syntax design, parsing, SVG generation, build automation, and an HTML
viewer were iteratively developed through a conversation with an LLM -
turning tedious tasks into manageable steps.