Attributes and styling

Attributes sit in square brackets after a declaration, comma-separated. Most are positional: the value's vocabulary decides what it sets, so you rarely write a key.

Colours#

Nine palette colours cover the diagram. A node with no colour draws in the neutral default.

Blue [rectangle, blue]
Green [rectangle, green]
Red [rectangle, red]
Orange [rectangle, orange]
Violet [rectangle, violet]
Teal [rectangle, teal]
Pink [rectangle, pink]
Yellow [rectangle, yellow]
Gray [rectangle, gray]

A hex colour ("#ff8800") or a CSS name (lightblue, crimson) maps to the nearest palette hue, so pasted code keeps its intent.

Fill styles#

Three fill styles set how a colour fills the shape. They are mutually exclusive; pastel is the default.

Pastel [rectangle, blue]
Bold [rectangle, blue, bold]
Outline [rectangle, blue, outline]

A shadow flag adds a drop shadow. Unlike the fill styles it is orthogonal; it composes with any of them.

Plain [rectangle, blue]
Shadowed [rectangle, blue, shadow]
Bold shadow [rectangle, blue, bold, shadow]

Shapes and icons#

A shape word draws that outline; a set/name token (or a bare known icon name) draws that pictogram. An icon on its own is a glyph with its label beneath. An icon combined with a shape or colour draws the shape, with the icon riding the corner as a badge.

Users [user]
Server [server, blue]
Files [aws/simple-storage-service]
Cache [cylinder, red]

Users -> Server -> Cache
Server -> Files

The icon catalog spans thousands of glyphs: cloud providers (aws/…, gcp/…, azure/…), technologies (tech/react, tech/postgres), and a large general set (server, database, user, lock). An unknown icon falls back to the node's shape; it is never invented.

Explicit keys#

An explicit key: value is always available and wins over guessing. This is how you put a queue icon on a queue-shaped node, or override a label.

Supported keys: icon, color, shape, fill (alias colorMode), frame, label, labelColor (alias textColor), group, and link (aliases href, url). Wireframe controls also take width: and value: (alias active:).

• label: overrides the displayed label without changing the name used in references, handy for long or duplicated labels.
• labelColor: inks the label in a palette colour, independent of the fill.
• link: attaches an external URL. The properties panel opens it, and SVG export wraps the node in an anchor.

db = Store [icon: cylinder, shape: queue, label: Message store]
Home [label: Landing page, link: https://koboyo.com]
Alert [diamond, labelColor: red]

Aliases#

Friendly words are accepted and normalized so pasted code and natural spellings both work:

• Shapes: box becomes rectangle, oval the stadium terminator ellipse, decision a diamond, database/db/storage a cylinder, doc a document, subroutine a predefined-process, offpage/off-page a pentagon, stop an octagon, box3d a cube, ring/doublecircle a double-circle, notched-rectangle a card, fork/join a fork-join bar, documents/stacked-document a multi-document, processes/stacked-rectangle a multi-process, lightning a bolt, cross a plus, crossedbox a crossbox. (circle stays its own shape, a true circle with the label inside; actor/person render the user pictogram rather than a drawn outline.)
• Flowchart roles: process becomes a rectangle, terminator/start/end an ellipse, data/io a parallelogram, prep/preparation a hexagon.
• BPMN roles: activity becomes a rectangle, event an ellipse, gateway a diamond.
• Colours: grey becomes gray, purple becomes violet.
• Icons: eraser-style dashes (aws-lambda) normalize to the catalog form (aws:lambda).
• Wireframe values: on/checked/true are on, off/unchecked/false off; widths accept 1/2, 1/3, 2/3 alongside half, third, two-thirds.

Unknown attribute words are diagnostics, not errors: the rest of the list still applies.

Decision [decision, orange]
Terminator [terminator, green]
Store [db, blue]
Decision -> Store