Getting started

New to CRAYON-C4? Two short pages take you from zero to your first diagram.

The whole story: CRAYON-C4 runs in your browser. Your work is saved automatically on your own machine — no account needed to start. The app has three pairs of screens (a viewer to read each diagram type and an editor to change it), plus a projects area for saving, loading, and exporting. You can explore everything risk-free using the built-in demo project. The fastest way to learn is to take the product tour — it walks you through the screens and key ideas in a few minutes.

Two ways in

There are two ways to start, depending on whether the system already exists:

• Design a new system from scratch — open an editor and model it by hand. Start with Your first diagram.
• Document a system you already have — generate a model straight from your codebase and keep it in sync as the code changes, without losing your manual edits. See Document from code.

In this section

• Tour of the app — the screens, the demo project, and where your work lives.
• Your first diagram — a guided, step-by-step C4 context diagram.
• Working in the three editors — the shared three-pane layout, canvas controls, and element editing used by all three diagram types.
• Document from code — generate from your repository and keep the model current.

Where next

• Tour of the app — start here.
• Video tutorials — prefer to watch? Recorded walkthroughs of the same ground.
• Concepts — prefer to understand the ideas first? Equally good starting point.