Can Amazon Q Developer draw diagrams. No but yes!

Can Amazon Q Developer draw diagrams. No but yes!

Can Amazon Q Developer draw architecture diagrams? No it can't draw them but it can code them which then is drawn by the diagram tool.

Published Oct 11, 2024
Amazon Q Developer doesn't have the capability to draw, but it can code and it can code drawio files.
You can test a prompt like: generate the drawio code representing an API Gateway, a Lambda function and a DynamoDB table connected together. Then you get the following result.
Amazon Q Developer has generated drawio code
Amazon Q Developer can generate drawio files
Now I can copy that in a file and display it with my preferred editor.
But I can also use Amazon Q Developer agent and install the drawio plugin in Visual Studio Code and in one step: /dev generate the drawio code representing an API Gateway, a Lambda function and a DynamoDB table connected together in a file called my-diagram.drawio, I get a new file in my workspace and can display it.
Amazon Q Developer agent has generated the drawio file.
Amazon Q Developer agent creates the drawio file directly
Here is the rendered file.
Now I can open the file and visualize it without leaving Visual Studio Code
Opening the file generated
It was less clicks to achieve the same result but Amazon Q Developer agent takes a bit more time to do the work. So you have to decide if it's worth the time saved on your side.
However where I believe the agent is certainly more convenient is when you have some Infrastucture as Code files in your editor and you want to generate the corresponding code. Here I have a simple terraform file deploying an Amazon API Gateway and AWS Lambda and some IAM roles.
Some terraform file
Some terraform file
Let's ask Amazon Q Developer agent to generate the drawio file to represent the infrastructure in this terraform file with the prompt: /dev generate the drawio code representing the infrastructure described in the files from this workspace.
The drawio for my workspace with a simple prompt
The drawio for my workspace with a simple prompt
What's interesting in that case is that Amazon Q Developer agent explored the workspace on its own, found the terraform file and generated the corresponding drawio file. All this happened with only one prompt. On the way, I had to tune the prompt in one or two occasions, though.
Please share the drawings you manage to get from Amazon Q Developer.
Yes in a way, it can draw.
 

Any opinions in this post are those of the individual author and may not reflect the opinions of AWS.

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