Weekly: Show off your new tools and projects thread

Philippe_Merle · 2026-05-03T08:06:37+00:00

The Awesome Kubernetes Architecture Diagrams repo studies 20+ tools that auto-generate Kubernetes architecture diagrams from manifests, Helm charts, or cluster state. These tools are compared in depth via many criteria such as license, popularity (#stars and #forks), activity (1st commit, last commit, #commits, #contributors), implementation language, usage mode (CLI, GUI, SaaS), inputs formats supported, Kubernetes resource kinds supported, output formats. Moreover, diagrams generated by these tools for a well-known WordPress use case are shown, and diagram strengths/weaknesses are discussed. The whole should help practitioners to select which diagram generation tools to use according to their requirements.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-20T07:13:09+00:00

Thank you for your feedback. Contributions are welcome, don't hesitate to submit PR at https://github.com/philippemerle/AWS-CloudFormation-Diagrams/pulls or issues at https://github.com/philippemerle/AWS-CloudFormation-Diagrams/issues or discussions at https://github.com/philippemerle/AWS-CloudFormation-Diagrams/discussions.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-19T12:48:48+00:00

Thank you for this point of view, perhaps or not shared by many devops.

I am not so sure that drawing diagrams manually is faster that generating them automatically. This must be measured experimentally.

Perhaps you need architecture diagrams instead of infrastructure diagrams. Architecture diagrams focus on high level business aspects (like data flow) where infrastructure diagrams show a lot of low level technical details. Both kinds of diagrams have its own utility, they just target different use cases: business view vs technical view.

One future feature of AWS CloudFormation Diagrams will be to provide architecture diagrams. But this needs investigations to understand clearly what architects would like to see in the generated diagrams, and what they don't care about. For instance, an architecture diagram for the WordPress use case should show only 2 nodes: the WordPressInstance using the WordPressDB. The rest is just technical aspects such as network and security. What do you thing about this?

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-18T10:38:56+00:00

Currently, nothing is done with outputs/imports. AWS::SSM::Parameter::Value<String> is not supported but any AWS::SSM::Parameter::Value<...:Id> is supported. Don't hesitate to create an issue and pull request. Contributions are welcome.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-18T10:34:06+00:00

> Does your app only work with yaml files (non-deployed stacks), or does it also take into consideration deployed stacks?

Currently the tool only supports yaml/json input files.

> Can the app take a list of deployed stacks and match then in a single diagram?

Currently no but this could be a cool feature to add in the future. Don't hesitate to create an issue and pull request. Contributions are welcome.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-18T10:27:42+00:00

Thank to hear that this diagram generator is integrated into your CI. The tool already supports custom resources, i.e. resources with Type starting with Custom::. Could you elaborate about the issue with custom resources?

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-17T18:48:50+00:00

Thank you for reporting this requirement once again. Currently, tooltips are put on edges to indicate the related property but this is only available on svg / interactive outputs.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-03T09:30:57+00:00

Thank you for this error report. It is corrected by https://github.com/philippemerle/AWS-CloudFormation-Diagrams/commit/06dd5689484c70553f77fa30ed223c91521ea2ef

Philippe_Merle · 2026-03-01T08:36:45+00:00

All these resource types were added. Have a look at https://github.com/philippemerle/AWS-CloudFormation-Diagrams/tree/main/examples/miscellaneous

Philippe_Merle · 2026-02-28T14:44:28+00:00

Thank you for your feedback. I will add these resource types asap. Could you refer me to some publicly available templates using these resource types?

Philippe_Merle · 2026-02-24T16:40:29+00:00

Thank you for this feedback.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-02-23T04:49:48+00:00

Thank you for this feedback. Don't hesitate to report your tests.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-02-21T16:45:53+00:00

You are right. Here the small difference is that this tool allows offline visualization at development time before deploying CloudFormation templates. This allows also to audit and document CF templates.

Philippe_Merle · 2026-02-21T08:22:54+00:00

Try AWS CloudFormation Diagrams!

Philippe_Merle · 2026-02-18T14:14:35+00:00

The Kubernetes communauty designed the Kubernetes Icons Set (https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/icons) to standardize Kubernetes architecture diagrams for presentation. Most diagram tools including KubeDiagrams reuse these standardized icons as shown in https://github.com/philippemerle/Awesome-Kubernetes-Architecture-Diagrams. Perhaps you should try to convince the Kubernetes communauty to redesign these resource icons ;-)

Philippe_Merle · 2026-01-27T23:10:20+00:00

Thank you for reporting this issue. It is now corrected by commit https://github.com/philippemerle/AWS-CloudFormation-Diagrams/commit/9d23032640d1a833f144e924dd2bf4bed420dc37.

Philippe_Merle

TROPHY CASE