Diagrams in ten minutes — a workflow for Napkin AI

What the tool is

Paste text and Napkin proposes diagrams that fit it — infographics, flowcharts, mind maps, data charts — choosing the form and offering several options. It works from the structure of the prose rather than asking you to place shapes on a canvas.

500 credits a week is enough for an individual making their own material. The constraint is the logo, which means a paid plan for anything leaving the company.

The ten-minute routine

1. Finish the prose first

Making the figure first means writing the text to fit the figure, which blurs the point. Finish the writing, decide where a figure would help, and paste only that paragraph.

2. Give it one paragraph at a time

Paste the whole document and you get a diagram so abstract it says nothing. What produces usable output is a single paragraph with concrete structure — three related elements, five sequential steps. One paragraph, one figure.

3. Judging the options

• Does the figure make the point without a caption?
• Are there between three and six elements? Seven or more is unreadable
• Do the arrows mean something? Decorative arrows confuse
• Are the labels wrapping or overflowing?

The last one bites constantly outside Latin scripts. Shape widths assume English labels, so longer text wraps or overflows. Shorten the label — 'activity log' rather than 'recording what the user does'.

Diagrams to reject

The most common failure is the empty circular diagram: three elements joined by arrows into a ring to suggest a cycle. It looks tidy and carries almost no information. If the original text contains no cycle and a ring appears, the form is bending the content.

Pyramids of non-hierarchical items are the same error. Stacking things vertically tells the reader there is a ranking, so stacking unranked items creates a claim you did not make.

Getting it into the deck

Export PNG or PDF and place it in Gamma, Canva or PowerPoint. Use Napkin for the figures rather than for the document — separating the figure step is what makes the time budget predictable.

Set the colours to match the deck before exporting. Recolouring afterwards is tedious, so pick one palette and make every figure in it.

Frequently asked questions