Visualize Your Live Software Architecture, Straight from the Code

Ever tried to explain your system's architecture and found yourself scribbling boxes and arrows on a whiteboard that's out of date before you even finish? Or maybe you've inherited a codebase and spent days tracing connections just to understand the basic data flow. Keeping architecture diagrams in sync with reality is a notorious, time-consuming chore.

What if your diagrams could be generated directly from your code, updated automatically, and act as a living document of your system? That's the idea behind LikeC4, a developer-first tool that turns your codebase into a clear, visual architecture model.

What It Does

LikeC4 is a modeling language and a set of tools that lets you describe your software architecture using code. You write definitions for your components, systems, and relationships in a simple, structured format. Then, LikeC4 builds interactive diagrams from those definitions. The key is that these diagrams are derived from your source files, which live right alongside the code they describe. Change the code, update the model, and your diagrams are regenerated.

Why It's Cool

The magic of LikeC4 is in its approach. It doesn't try to auto-magically infer your architecture (which often creates a messy, unusable diagram). Instead, it gives you a clean, textual language to declare your intended architecture. This has a few big wins:

• Diagrams as Code: Your architecture specs are version-controlled, reviewable, and diffable, just like your source code.
• Multiple Views: From a single model, you can generate different diagrams for different audiences—a high-level system context, a detailed container view, or a focused component diagram.
• Interactive Exploration: The generated diagrams aren't static images. They're interactive web views you can pan, zoom, and click through to understand relationships.
• It's Just Files: You're not locked into a proprietary SaaS platform. Your models are plain text files, and the diagram generation runs locally or in your CI/CD pipeline.

It respects the fact that architecture is a design decision, not just an observed artifact. It helps you document the why and the intended structure, not just the what.

How to Try It

The quickest way to get a feel for LikeC4 is to check out their online playground. You can edit the model code and see the diagram update in real-time.

1. Head over to the LikeC4 Playground.
2. You'll see example model code on the left and the resulting diagram on the right.
3. Try tweaking an element name or adding a new relationship to see it update.

To use it in your own project, you can install the CLI tool or use the VS Code extension. The GitHub repository is the best place to start. It's well-documented with examples that show you how to structure your .c4 files. The learning curve is gentle, especially if you're familiar with concepts from the C4 model.

Final Thoughts

LikeC4 feels like a practical step forward in a problem space full of forgotten PNGs and outdated Confluence pages. It won't replace deep design discussions or whiteboard sessions, but it's an excellent tool for codifying the outcome of those discussions and keeping that knowledge alive and connected to the codebase.

For teams looking to improve onboarding, streamline design reviews, or simply keep their architectural runway visible, it's definitely worth an afternoon of tinkering. It turns architecture documentation from a burdensome report into a natural byproduct of the development process.

Found an interesting tool? Let us know @githubprojects.