Flowchart Maker
Boxes for steps, diamonds for decisions, and arrows that can loop back. It tells you about a dead end or a branch you left unlabelled, and exports as Mermaid, SVG or PDF.
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Start from a real example
Pick one and change it to fit. Everything stays on this device. Nothing is uploaded.
0 steps, 2 arrows, 0 decisions.
What this chart is telling you
- Nothing in the chart yet. Start with the first thing that happens.
Frequently asked questions
The questions people actually ask about this document.
- What is a flowchart?
- A picture of a process: boxes for the steps, diamonds for the decisions, arrows for the order. It earns its place over a numbered list in exactly two situations, and only those two: when the process branches, and when it loops back. A straight sequence of eight steps is a list, and drawing it as boxes makes it longer to read rather than shorter.
- How many shapes should I use?
- Four, which is what this tool offers: a terminator, a step, a decision, and an end. The full standard has about fourteen, and a diagram that uses them is one where the shapes have stopped meaning anything, because nobody remembers which is which. If a shape needs a legend, the legend is doing the work.
- How detailed should it be?
- Enough that somebody who has not done the process could follow it, and no more. The test is to hand it to somebody new and watch where they stop. Steps that are obvious to everybody can go; steps where two people in the room do different things have to stay, because that difference is usually why the chart is being drawn.
- Can it loop back?
- Yes, and a loop is often the most useful thing on the page. Sending something back for more detail, retrying, escalating and starting again are real parts of real processes, and a chart that cannot show them flattens the process into a line it never follows. Arrows that point backwards are drawn dashed and routed around the side so they stay readable.
- Does it do swimlanes?
- No. Lanes answer who does each step, and they double the width of every chart to do it. Where that question matters more than the sequence, a RACI matrix answers it better and in less space. If you need both, draw the flow here and put the names in the step labels.
- How is this different from a process map?
- Mostly in how much it claims. A flowchart shows the order of steps. A process map in the formal sense adds the inputs, outputs, owners and timings for each one, which is a bigger document and a longer exercise. Most people asking for a process map want a flowchart with the owners written in.