The shortlist
8 projects
The wider reading list: projects that stood out across the week, in their own words. Positions reflect the shortlist, not GitHub rank.
Also worth watching
Fast risers from off the boards — worth a look anyway.
The wider reading list: projects that stood out across the week, in their own words. Positions reflect the shortlist, not GitHub rank.
Fast risers from off the boards — worth a look anyway.
The weekly Star
A project by cathrynlavery
A skill for Claude Code and other agent hosts that produces 39 editorial diagram types as self-contained HTML+SVG.
A diagram can contain the right information and still be hard to read. Every box asks for equal attention. Labels shrink to fit. Colors separate things without explaining why they are separate. You spend the next half hour fixing the picture before you can use it.
Diagram Design is a skill for coding agents that addresses those decisions. It supplies a visual system, references for thirty-nine diagram types, and checks the agent can run against its work. The output is a self-contained HTML file that opens offline without a build step or JavaScript.
It follows archify, last week's pick, which turns a structured specification into a diagram through a compiler and validation loop. Diagram Design puts more of the instruction into the act of drawing: what to emphasize, how much to include, and when a diagram is worth making at all.
Stars at each capture
Rank on each board
The visual rules are deliberately narrow. One accent color marks the one or two things that deserve attention first. Hairline borders separate regions. Shadows are left out. Coordinates follow a 4px grid, and the guidance favors removing material when the page becomes crowded.
Those choices give the agent a basis for decisions it would otherwise make afresh on every request. They also make a series of diagrams easier to read together: the accent means something, rather than changing jobs from one picture to the next.
The project checks parts of that system in code. Its CI renders the shipped examples and compares images with clipping released, exposing text that would otherwise be hidden. Other checks cover label placement and whether a treemap cell's area agrees with its value. The skill also includes a self-check script for generated output. These checks catch specific visual mistakes; you still have to judge whether the picture explains the subject.
Two workflows stand out. The first is onboarding the skill to an existing site. Given a URL, it can inspect the palette and fonts, map them onto the diagram's visual roles, and check contrast at the sizes the diagram will use. It proposes adjustments and reports what it sampled, so you can review how it interpreted the site's design.
The second is redrawing an existing diagram. Given a Mermaid block or a
.drawio file, it extracts the structure and lays it out again. The detail
can change with the destination: a fuller version for documentation, a
smaller one for a presentation, or a simpler account for a reader who only
needs the main path. An import ledger records what was merged, collapsed,
or dropped.
That ledger matters. Simplification changes an explanation, and the useful question is what the reader has lost in exchange for a clearer view.
The skill also asks whether a paragraph would do the job better. That is a good question to put before the drawing begins. A diagram earns its space when the relationships become easier to understand by seeing them.
We had been using Diagram Design for weeks before it appeared on the board. Our recurring difficulty was Chinese typography: font fallback, small labels, and uneven spacing in mixed Chinese and English text.
We maintain diagram-design-zh, an MIT-licensed fork with attribution to the original project. It adds embedded Chinese fonts, a minimum size for CJK text, mixed-language spacing and punctuation rules, and canvas presets for formats such as WeChat covers and Xiaohongshu cards. The fork's gallery shows what those changes look like. That involvement is part of our perspective on this pick.
For Claude Code, installation is:
/plugin marketplace add cathrynlavery/diagram-design
/plugin install diagram-design@diagram-designThe README also covers Codex, Factory Droid, and Pi. Give it a diagram you already need to explain, along with the document or site it belongs in. That makes a useful first test: whether the result is easier for its intended reader to follow, and how much editing remains before you would publish it.
A coding-assistant skill that forces ADHD-friendly replies: action-first answers, numbered steps, and no filler.
Days on board: 4 daily · 4 weekly · 3 monthly
A skill for Claude Code and other agent hosts that produces 39 editorial diagram types as self-contained HTML+SVG.
Days on board: 4 daily · 3 weekly · 7 monthly
Browser-based 3D globe app that visualizes live public data—aircraft, ships, satellites, earthquakes, and cameras—with voice control.
Days on board: 3 daily · 4 weekly · 0 monthly
Personal AI trading terminal that trades prediction markets, crypto, and futures through natural-language chat.
Days on board: 3 daily · 0 weekly · 0 monthly
Self-hosted open-source CRM that runs on your own server and uses AI agents to attend, qualify and sell over WhatsApp.
Days on board: 2 daily · 0 weekly · 0 monthly
A Claude Code plugin billed as an agent harness operating system, with an optional hosted GitHub App for private repositories.
Days on board: 4 daily · 7 weekly · 0 monthly · specialist pick
An agent skill that turns codebases or system descriptions into interactive, shareable HTML/SVG architecture maps.
Days on board: 0 daily · 7 weekly · 7 monthly · specialist pick
A plugin for AI coding agents that steers them to write minimal code via a ladder favoring reuse, stdlib, and native platform features.
Days on board: 1 daily · 7 weekly · 0 monthly · specialist pick
Topic in, narrated explainer video out: every frame drawn in code with Remotion, TTS voiceover, subtitles, and a chapter bar — a Claude Code / Codex skill that works in Chinese or English.