An agent skill that turns complex terminal output into styled HTML pages you actually want to read.
Ask your agent to explain a system architecture, review a diff, or compare requirements against a plan. Instead of ASCII art and box-drawing tables, it generates a self-contained HTML page and opens it in your browser.
> draw a diagram of our authentication flow
> /diff-review
> /plan-review ~/docs/refactor-plan.md
visual-explainer.mp4
Every coding agent defaults to ASCII art when you ask for a diagram. Box-drawing characters, monospace alignment hacks, text arrows. It works for trivial cases, but anything beyond a 3-box flowchart turns into an unreadable mess.
Tables are worse. Ask the agent to compare 15 requirements against a plan and you get a wall of pipes and dashes that wraps and breaks in the terminal. The data is there but it's painful to read.
This skill fixes that. Real typography, dark/light themes, interactive Mermaid diagrams with zoom and pan. No build step, no dependencies beyond a browser.
Pi:
pi install https://github.com/nicobailon/visual-explainerClaude Code (plugin):
claude /plugin install https://github.com/nicobailon/visual-explainerNote: Claude Code plugins namespace commands as /visual-explainer:command-name.
OpenAI Codex:
git clone https://github.com/nicobailon/visual-explainer.git ~/.agents/skills/visual-explainer
mkdir -p ~/.agents/commands
cp ~/.agents/skills/visual-explainer/commands/*.md ~/.agents/commands/| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/generate-web-diagram |
Generate an HTML diagram for any topic |
/generate-visual-plan |
Generate a visual implementation plan for a feature or extension |
/generate-slides |
Generate a magazine-quality slide deck |
/diff-review |
Visual diff review with architecture comparison and code review |
/plan-review |
Compare a plan against the codebase with risk assessment |
/project-recap |
Mental model snapshot for context-switching back to a project |
/fact-check |
Verify accuracy of a document against actual code |
/share |
Deploy an HTML page to Vercel and get a live URL |
The agent also kicks in automatically when it's about to dump a complex table in the terminal (4+ rows or 3+ columns) — it renders HTML instead.
Any command that produces a scrollable page supports --slides to generate a slide deck instead:
/diff-review --slides
/project-recap --slides 2w
visual-explainer-slides.mp4
SKILL.md ← workflow + design principles
commands/ ← slash commands (works with pi and Claude Code)
references/ ← agent reads before generating
├── css-patterns.md (layouts, animations, theming)
├── libraries.md (Mermaid, Chart.js, fonts)
├── responsive-nav.md (sticky TOC for multi-section pages)
└── slide-patterns.md (slide engine, transitions, presets)
templates/ ← reference templates with different palettes
├── architecture.html
├── mermaid-flowchart.html
├── data-table.html
└── slide-deck.html
↓
~/.agent/diagrams/filename.html → opens in browser
The skill routes to the right approach automatically: Mermaid for flowcharts and diagrams, CSS Grid for architecture overviews, HTML tables for data, Chart.js for dashboards.
- Requires a browser to view
- Switching OS theme requires a page refresh for Mermaid SVGs
- Results vary by model capability
Borrows ideas from Anthropic's frontend-design skill and interface-design.
MIT
