visual-communication

A guide to explaining software systems with diagrams written as text, mainly using Mermaid and the C4 model. It helps choose diagrams such as flowcharts, sequence diagrams, state diagrams, data-relationship diagrams, and architecture diagrams.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose and write Mermaid diagrams for workflows, service interactions, state machines, data models, component dependencies, and high-level system architecture.
Why use it?
It makes processes, interactions, state changes, dependencies, and system structure easier to understand when prose would be slow to follow.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/viktorbezdek/skillstack/visual-communication
Any agent
npx skills add viktorbezdek/skillstack --skill visual-communication
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/viktorbezdek/skillstack

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 125 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,067 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00125 $0.02067
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.01033
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00413
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00207

Measured 2d ago against content hash de3c69b2d0d1, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

visual-communication scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

communication/skills/visual-communication/SKILL.md · 227 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 227 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Visual Communication

A diagram is not decoration — it is compression. If three paragraphs describe the same flow a diagram shows in 20 seconds, the diagram wins. If a diagram takes ten minutes to read, the paragraphs won.

When a diagram beats prose

Signal Diagram
The reader needs to understand a process with branches Flowchart
The reader needs to see who talks to whom and when Sequence diagram
The reader needs to understand state transitions State diagram
The reader needs to see what depends on what Component / dependency diagram
The reader needs the data model ER diagram
The reader needs the big picture of a system C4 diagram
The reader needs a 2×2 trade-off / matrix Quadrant / matrix

When a diagram does NOT beat prose:

  • Simple linear sequences (1 → 2 → 3) — a list is clearer.
  • Content-heavy ideas — diagrams force compression that loses nuance.
  • When the diagram would have 30+ nodes — split or describe.
  • When the reader needs exact values — a table beats a chart.

Picking the right diagram

Flow-oriented (what happens in what order)?
├── With branches/decisions → flowchart
├── Between actors/components over time → sequence diagram
└── With explicit states → state diagram

Structure-oriented (how is it organized)?
├── Data → ER diagram
├── Code → class diagram
├── System at high level → C4 diagram
└── Components + dependencies → dependency graph

Comparison-oriented?
├── 2 dimensions, 4 quadrants → quadrant chart
└── N options, M criteria → matrix / table (often not a diagram)

Full decision tree with worked examples in references/diagram-selection-matrix.md.

Mermaid is the default

Mermaid is the best default for engineering diagrams because:

  • Text-based → versionable in git.
  • Renders natively in GitHub, GitLab, Notion, Obsidian, VS Code.
  • Low cost to edit; no image file to re-export.
  • Adequate for 90% of diagrams engineering teams draw.

Use PNG/SVG diagrams only when Mermaid cannot express the idea (complex physical diagrams, highly custom layouts).

Read the full file on GitHub · 227 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 227 lines · 125 tokens per session scan A de3c69b2d0d1

Subscribe to this mod's changes

visual-communication is a skill published in the GitHub repository viktorbezdek/skillstack (11 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 125 tokens to every session and 2,067 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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