Mermaid diagrams are even better because you don't waste characters on the visual representation but rather the relationships between them. It's the difference between
graph TD
User -->|Enters Credentials| Frontend[React App]
Frontend -->|POST /auth| API[NodeJS Service]
API -->|Query| DB[(PostgreSQL)]
API --x|Invalid| Frontend
DB -->|User Object| API
API -->|JWT| Frontend
and +-------+ +-------------+ +---------+
| User | | React App | | NodeJS |
+-------+ +-------------+ +---------+
| | |
| Enters Creds | POST /auth |
|--------------------->|---------------------->|
| | |
| Invalid | <-- [X] Error -----|
|<---------------------| |
| | Query DB |
| |---------------------->| [ DB ]
Plus while an LLM can understand relationships via pure ASCII or an image, it's just easier to give it the relationship data directly.
But the point is to have something easy to read both for humans and LLM, no?
It’s harder to read mermaid in a terminal or a markdown file…