Replicating Diagrams (/drawio replicate)

Use /drawio replicate when you want to recreate an uploaded image, screenshot, or reference diagram as a structured draw.io bundle.

What Replication Optimizes For

• cleaner redraws than raw screenshot tracing
• editable YAML-first artifacts
• palette-aware restyling
• academic-safe exports when needed

Replication Flow

1. Receive the uploaded image and any text hints
2. Choose domain, theme, and color mode
3. Extract structure into YAML
4. Summarize logic and palette when needed
5. Render the offline bundle
6. Compare and refine with /drawio edit

Color Modes

Mode	Default	Behavior
preserve-original	Yes	Preserve source background and dominant palette through explicit style overrides
theme-first	No	Normalize the redraw to the selected theme and treat source colors as hints

Replicated specs should usually record:

• meta.source: replicated
• meta.replication.colorMode
• meta.replication.background
• meta.replication.palette

Theme Defaults by Domain

Domain	Recommended theme
software architecture	tech-blue
business process	tech-blue
research workflow	academic
environmental / lifecycle	nature
accessibility-first review	high-contrast
presentation slides	dark

Logic Confirmation

Replication should pause for confirmation when semantics are uncertain.

The review draft should include:

• a pure ASCII logic graph
• the extracted palette summary
• which colors will be preserved explicitly
• which parts will fall back to theme tokens

Example Requests

Preserve the source palette

/drawio replicate
Color mode: preserve-original
[upload image]
Keep the warm nodes and dark connectors instead of normalizing everything to tech-blue

Normalize to an academic paper palette

/drawio replicate with academic theme
[upload paper figure]
Redraw this for IEEE submission and keep it grayscale-safe

Normalize to a presentation theme

/drawio replicate with dark theme
[upload architecture screenshot]
Redraw this for a keynote slide

Output Artifacts

Replication should produce the same editable trio as other routes:

• .drawio
• .spec.yaml
• .arch.json

Optionally add:

• standalone SVG
• desktop PNG / PDF / JPG when draw.io Desktop is available

Troubleshooting

The redraw is too literal

Switch to theme-first if you want brand or paper normalization instead of source-color fidelity.

The redraw is too generic

Stay on preserve-original and make sure the extracted palette summary is accepted before rendering.

The source image is too dense

Split the figure into sub-diagrams or reduce the redraw scope before regeneration.

Next Steps

• Workflows
• Editing Diagrams
• Design System
• Specification Format