Mermaid Diagrams for Google Docs

What it does

Mermaid is a plain-text syntax for diagrams: flowcharts, sequence diagrams, state machines, entity relationships, Gantt charts. This add-on opens a sidebar in Google Docs where you type that syntax, see the diagram render as you type, and insert it into your document at the cursor.

The diagram is inserted as an image, so it travels with the document and prints correctly. It is rendered at three times display resolution so it stays sharp on screen and on paper.

How it works

Everything runs in your browser. No server of ours is involved in rendering. Your diagram text is turned into an image by JavaScript running inside the sidebar on your own machine, and that image is placed into your document. The text never leaves your browser, and neither does your document.

We operate no backend for this add-on. There is no database, no account, and nothing to log in to.

Privacy

We collect nothing. Specifically:

We do not collect, store, transmit or process the contents of your documents. We do not collect your diagram text. We do not use analytics, tracking pixels or cookies. We do not create user accounts, and we hold no personal data about you, so there is nothing for us to retain, share, sell or delete. No data is transferred to any third party by us.

One third-party request, disclosed in full. The sidebar loads the open-source Mermaid rendering library from the jsDelivr public CDN when you open it. This is a normal request made by your browser to fetch a JavaScript file. It contains none of your document content and none of your diagram text. As with any web request, jsDelivr can see the IP address it comes from; their privacy policy is at jsdelivr.com.

Your use of Google Docs itself remains governed by Google's own privacy policy. This add-on does not change that relationship.

Permissions

The add-on requests exactly two permissions. It requests no access to Google Drive of any kind.

See, edit, create and delete only the specific Google Docs document you use this add-on with (documents.currentonly): needed to insert the diagram into the document you have open. It grants no access to any other file in your Drive. We could not open another document even if we wanted to.

Display and run third-party web content in prompts and sidebars (script.container.ui): needed to show the editor sidebar.

Support

Questions, bug reports and feature requests go to ai@artifact-network.org. Answers in English and French.

Publisher

Adnan Ghribi, ai@artifact-network.org