ditaa

ditaa allows you to build diagrams from ascii art. You have to have ditaa installed (on ubuntu sudo apt install ditaa). Syntax is on the ditaa repo page. You’ll want to update org-ditaa-jar-path appropriately (in configs/org/org_config_variables.el). Package managers will generally install it into /usr/share/ditaa/ditaa.jar. You can also use artist-mode to draw the boxes, and once drawn it’s handy to use overwrite to type inside the boxes.

+----------+	  +-----------+	    +------------+      +-----------\
| {io}	   |	  |{d}	      |	    | {s} c1AB	 |      |cBLU       |
| process  |----->|document   |<--->| database	 |----=>|regular    |
|	   |	  |	      |	    |		 |      |step       |
+----------+	  +-----------+	    +------------+      +-----------/