TOtodsacerdoti·Jul 15, 2024Submission
Tlsd: Generate (message) sequence diagrams from TLA+ state traces
75 points · Open discussioneras
tlsd
Python2024–2024
eras / tlsd
tlsd
Generate (message) sequence diagrams from TLA+ state traces
2Distinct people
2Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
75GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Generate (message) sequence diagrams from TLA+ state traces
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by hour2 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2024-07-15 09:00:27 UTC to 2024-07-15 16:33:15 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 15, 09:00 | 2024-07-15 09:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 10:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Jul 15, 10:00 | 2024-07-15 10:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 11:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 15, 11:00 | 2024-07-15 11:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 12:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 15, 12:00 | 2024-07-15 12:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 13:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 15, 13:00 | 2024-07-15 13:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 14:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 15, 14:00 | 2024-07-15 14:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 15:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 15, 15:00 | 2024-07-15 15:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 16:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 15, 16:00 | 2024-07-15 16:00:00 UTC | 2024-07-15 17:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
2 sourcesSequence diagrames (that seems not much different swimlane diagrams) are great, so much so that I created a tool that generates them from appropriately built TLA+ specs representing message exchange scenarios: https://github.com/eras/tlsd
However, while they are good for representing scenarios, they are not that good for specifying functionality. You can easily represent the one golden path in the system, but if you need to start representing errors or diverging paths, you probably end up needing multiple diagrams, and if you need multiple diagrams, then how do you know if you have enough diagrams to fully specify the functionality?
> The protocol is complicated enough for me to think that the diagrams are the source of truth of the protocol. In other words, I'd venture to say that if an implementation of the Double Rachet algorithm ever
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does something that doesn't match the diagrams, it is more likely it is the code that is wrong than vice-versa.
I would believe the latter statement, but I wouldn't say the first statement is that said in other words, so I don't believe this is the correct conclusion.
My conclusion would be that diagrams are great way to visualize the truth of the protocol, but they are not a good way to be the source of truth: they should be generated from a more versatile (and formal) source truth.