Every box opens
Every box in a flowgo map holds its own full canvas — zoomable,
pannable, as deep as the thing you are describing. One map instead of
twelve diagrams, in a plain-text .flowgo file you keep.
flowgo's own architecture, running on this page
The plate is wider than this screen. Scroll it sideways.
map / node website flowgo-map.com 340 180 4 4 node editor "Editor (browser)" 660 20 node mcp "MCP endpoint" 660 340 node collab "Live collab (Yjs)" 980 180 node format ".flowgo format + parser" 20 180 4 3 edge website editor edge website mcp edge website collab edge editor format edge mcp format map /website node snapshot "Snapshot store (Postgres)" 20 50 node ogimage "OG-image renderer" 320 50 node share "/m/<id> share link" 170 250 edge snapshot share edge ogimage share map /mcp node createmap "create_map (one-shot)" 20 50 node workspace "start_workspace + incremental tools" 340 50
- 595 bytes
- 3 canvases
- 10 nodes
- 2 levels
Boxes with a dropped edge open. Click one, or tab to it and press Enter; the breadcrumb at the top of the plate walks back out. The text beside this is the whole file: no part of the map lives anywhere else.
Three levels, one file
arc42 §5 defines a Building Block View as a hierarchy: the system as one box, then the insides of one of those boxes, then the insides of one of those. Every tool in the category draws that as three disconnected pictures which drift apart the moment one of them changes. In flowgo it is one file with three canvases in it, and you walk down through them.
Open the arc42 example, three levels deep →
It is on /gallery with the other four: a
Wardley map, a Cynefin starter, this architecture map and a roadmap
— each with its .flowgo source printed beside it.
One binary, on your own machine
flowgo mindmap.flowgo serves the same editor from a
single binary against a file on your disk. No account, no network,
no service in the middle. The CLI is not a cut-down version of the
hosted site; it is the same editor bundle reading your file.
The file is the map. It is plain text, it diffs, it goes in git, and old files keep opening: the format stays backward-compatible and the round-trip through it stays lossless. flowgo is open source under AGPL-3.0, so nothing here can be taken away from you.
An agent can edit the map you are looking at
One MCP call, create_map, turns .flowgo
text into a live, shareable URL that you or the agent can keep
editing. The interesting part is what it will not do while you have
the map open:
- it will not apply an edit over unsaved work of yours;
- it will not echo your own saves back at you as if they were its edits;
- it will not move your camera; where you are looking is yours.
The MCP endpoint docs → and the Claude Code / Cursor agent skill.
One renderer, everywhere the file goes
The map at the top of this page is drawn by the same read-only
renderer the
Obsidian,
VS Code,
remark/rehype and
browser extension
integrations ship. A .flowgo file in a vault, in a repo,
in a docs build and on this page is the same map, with the same
boxes opening in the same places.
What flowgo is not
Flowcharts, sequence diagrams, ER diagrams, Gantt charts, class/UML diagrams — Mermaid and PlantUML are the right, well-established tool for those, and flowgo doesn't try to compete there.
| Mermaid / PlantUML | Flowgo | |
|---|---|---|
| Made for | Flowcharts, sequence diagrams, ER/UML, Gantt charts | Nested mind-maps, system maps, thinking canvases |
| Nesting | Flat — one diagram, no drill-down | Every node can hold its own submap, zoomable/pannable |
| Result | Rendered once into a static image | A live, editable canvas — pan, zoom, drill in |
The same difference shows up in agent tool-use: a Mermaid code block is a good-faith attempt at a diagram that a downstream renderer may or may not display well, and that the model can't reach back into once it's emitted.
Start a map
An empty canvas, no account, nothing to install. Your draft stays in
this browser session for 24 hours; export it as a
.flowgo file or share it with a link at any
point, and sign in when you want to keep it;
the map you're working on comes with you.
There are no customer logos on this page, no testimonials and no usage numbers. flowgo is new and there are no customers yet; when there are, they will be named here with their permission and not before.
flowgo-map.com is a hosted service for the tool, run by Exaptation GmbH, and it is in alpha with no uptime guarantee. The tool itself is open source and runs without it.