_I_iostreamer_·Sep 19, 2024Submission
Show HN: I made a small runtime to visualise complex engineering flows
4 points · Open discussionmetz-sh
simulacrum
TypeScript2024–2024
metz-sh / simulacrum
simulacrum
Code-playground to visualise complex engineering flows.
2Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
425GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Code-playground to visualise complex engineering flows.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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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 day3 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2024-08-28 06:42:42 UTC to 2024-09-19 15:18:31 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 28 | 2024-08-28 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-08-29 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Aug 29 | 2024-08-29 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-08-30 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 30 | 2024-08-30 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-08-31 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 31 | 2024-08-31 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 1 | 2024-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-02 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2 | 2024-09-02 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-03 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 3 | 2024-09-03 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-04 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 4 | 2024-09-04 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-05 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 5 | 2024-09-05 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-06 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 6 | 2024-09-06 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-07 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 7 | 2024-09-07 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-08 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 8 | 2024-09-08 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-09 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 9 | 2024-09-09 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-10 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 10 | 2024-09-10 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-11 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 11 | 2024-09-11 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-12 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 12 | 2024-09-12 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-13 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 13 | 2024-09-13 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-14 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 14 | 2024-09-14 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-15 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 15 | 2024-09-15 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-16 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 16 | 2024-09-16 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-17 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 17 | 2024-09-17 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-18 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 18 | 2024-09-18 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-19 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 19 | 2024-09-19 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-09-20 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
What Hacker News says
3 sourcesShow HN: Design architecture using code and visually simulate it in browser
Hey HN,
I have been working on this for a few months and recently open sourced my work. It’s a code playground where you can write TypeScript based code and the bundled runtime will execute it visually.
Here are some examples that you can try right away:
Hello world https://app.metz.sh/template/2
Average stock price(Event based system) https://app.metz.sh/template/7
A polling setup(Shows parallel flows) https://app.metz.sh/template/4
There are more on the readme https://github.com/metz-sh/simulacrum#examples
I have been building software for ~8 years now but till this day I feel limited on how I can express my design. Boxes and lines just don’t do the job when complexity passes a threshold. I thought I would have luck with mermaid, but it’s just a codified way of creating boxes.
But with metz, I want to build a figma like experience. Like
Read the rest
how designers use the tools that make most sense, create a design which democratises their idea and invites a health discourse.
I as an engineer want to simply write the code for my design & get a figma like prototype which I can share with my Architect and PM and get it reviewed asynchronously.
I believe code is the best thing to do this as it’s such a reliable and easy way to express complexity. Unlike other code-to-diagrams tool, metz code doesn’t talk about where to place a box. You simply code to solve a design problem.
I have been scared to submit this for a while because I couldn’t find a single tool which leaned in this direction & I thought I was building something wrong. But I would love to know your thoughts and receive critique!
Open-source runtime to visualise complex engineering flows
2 points · Open discussion