A Golang-based modern diagram scripting language that turns text to diagrams


What does D2 look like?

# Actors
hans: Hans Niemann

defendants: {
  mc: Magnus Carlsen
  playmagnus: Play Magnus Group
  chesscom: Chess.com
  naka: Hikaru Nakamura

  mc -> playmagnus: Owns majority
  playmagnus <-> chesscom: Merger talks
  chesscom -> naka: Sponsoring
}

# Accusations
hans -> defendants: 'sueing for $100M'

# Offense
defendants.naka -> hans: Accused of cheating on his stream
defendants.mc -> hans: Lost then withdrew with accusations
defendants.chesscom -> hans: 72 page report of cheating

There is syntax highlighting with the editor plugins linked below.

D2 render example

Rendered with the TALA layout engine.

For more examples, see ./docs/examples.

Quickstart

The most convenient way to use D2 is to just run it as a CLI executable to produce SVGs from .d2 files.

# First, install D2
curl -fsSL https://d2lang.com/install.sh | sh -s --

echo 'x -> y -> z' > in.d2
d2 --watch in.d2 out.svg

A browser window will open with out.svg and live-reload on changes to in.d2.

Install

The easiest way to install is with our install script:

curl -fsSL https://d2lang.com/install.sh | sh -s --

You can run the install script with --dry-run to see the commands that will be used to install without executing them.

Or if you have Go installed you can install from source though you won’t get the manpage:

go install oss.terrastruct.com/d2@latest

You can also install a release from source which will include manpages. See ./docs/INSTALL.md#source-release.

To uninstall with the install script:

curl -fsSL https://d2lang.com/install.sh | sh -s -- --uninstall

For detailed installation docs, see ./docs/INSTALL.md. We demonstrate alternative methods and examples for each OS.

As well, the functioning of the install script is described in detail to alleviate any concern of its use. We recommend using your OS’s package manager directly instead for improved security but the install script is by no means insecure.

D2 as a library

In addition to being a runnable CLI tool, D2 can also be used to produce diagrams from Go programs.

For examples, see ./docs/examples/lib. This blog post also demos a complete, runnable example of using D2 as a library for a real-world use case.

Themes

D2 includes a variety of official themes to style your diagrams beautifully right out of the box. See ./d2themes to browse the available themes and make or contribute your own creation.