# Diagram Templates & Design-Principles Resources Gakaso publishes two bodies of reference material specifically so that an external agent generating diagrams or UI design **from scratch, with no human designer in the loop**, can produce output grounded in established practice rather than improvising from nothing. Both are exposed as **unauthenticated MCP resources** — no API key or project binding needed to read them, so you can consult them at any point in a session, even before you have project credentials. This is the practical answer to "how do I make what I generate actually good": read these resources, then use the guidance while you build, rather than treating diagram/UI creation as a blank-page problem. ## Diagram template catalog `gakaso://diagram-templates/index` and `gakaso://diagram-templates/{category}` expose a taxonomy of **89 diagram templates across 8 categories**: | Category | Covers | |---|---| | `process-flow` | Flowcharts, sequence diagrams, activity diagrams, swimlanes, state machines, BPMN-style process diagrams | | `software-architecture` | Class diagrams, component diagrams, architecture diagrams, C4-style diagrams, package diagrams | | `data-quantitative` | Bar/line/pie charts, scatter plots, heatmaps, Sankey diagrams, funnels | | `time-planning` | Gantt charts, timelines, roadmaps, kanban | | `structure-hierarchy` | Org charts, trees, mind maps, concept maps | | `strategy-ideation` | Matrices, 2x2s, Venn diagrams, SWOT, quadrant charts | | `ux-service` | User flows, journey maps, wireframes, sitemaps | | `scientific-math` | Diagrams from scientific/mathematical domains | Read `gakaso://diagram-templates/index` first — it's a lightweight index (id, name, aliases, intent triggers per template) meant for matching a human's ambiguous natural-language request ("show me how the auth flow works," "map the onboarding process") to the closest template. Once you've picked a candidate, read `gakaso://diagram-templates/{category}` for that category to get the full template (intent, anatomy, canvas-mapping guidance, and a quality checklist). ## Diagram-selection manual `gakaso://manuals/diagram-selection` is a companion decision procedure: given an ambiguous request, it walks through how to get from intent → category → specific template, including a decision tree, clarifying-question patterns for when the request is genuinely ambiguous, common intent-phrase patterns, guidance for diagrams that need to combine multiple templates, and an output contract to build before you start drawing on the canvas. Read this alongside the template catalog rather than the catalog alone — it's the "how to choose," where the catalog is the "what's available." ## Design-principles manual `gakaso://manuals/design-principles` is a structured body of design guidance intended for an LLM to apply mechanically when generating UI or diagrams without human design input. It covers 14 design principles spanning areas such as visual hierarchy, whitespace/spacing rhythm, typography scale, color systems, Gestalt grouping, component consistency, accessible contrast, and responsive/adaptive layout — each grounded against Gakaso's actual primitives (semantic shapes, diagram nodes/edges, design tokens) rather than stated abstractly. It also includes a structured generation procedure and a review rubric you can use to self-check your own output before handing it back to a human, plus a small set of tone presets (e.g. minimal/professional, warm/friendly, bold/editorial, technical/dense, calm/elegant) you can select between depending on the project's intended feel. The manual's actual rule content, checklists, generation-procedure steps, and review-rubric detail live only in this MCP resource and in the equivalent `/docs` page inside the Gakaso app — this document intentionally does not reproduce them. **Read the resource directly** rather than relying on a paraphrase, since it's designed to be consumed programmatically by an agent at generation time. ## How this differs from "Gakaso AI mode" design quality The manual above is separate from — and does not include — the internal design-quality judgment that Gakaso's own server-side "Gakaso AI" generation mode applies automatically (see `/ai/generation.md`). That internal rubric is not published. `gakaso://manuals/design-principles` is the openly-published resource meant specifically for you, an external agent, to consult when you are the one doing the generation work. ## Practical workflow 1. Human asks you to build/diagram something with no existing reference to copy from. 2. Read the relevant resource(s) above (diagram templates + selection manual for diagrams; design-principles manual for UI or for polishing a diagram's presentation). 3. Pick a template / apply the principles while you create canvas objects (see `/canvas/application-mode.md` or `/canvas/diagram-mode.md`). 4. Self-review against the manual's review rubric before considering the task done.