Use AI to generate flowcharts with swimlanes

Hi @speerjoyce1,

Thanks for your post! Unfortunately, this isn’t currently supported in Lucid, but we’re very interested in your feedback and committed to continually improving our products. If you’re willing to share, we’d love to hear more details about your use case or what you’d like to see in this experience within this thread. I’ve also converted this post to an idea so that it’s visible to others within the Product Feedback section of the community - from here, they can upvote it and add details of their own.

Finally, for more information on how Lucid manages feedback via this community, take a look at this post:

https://community.lucid.co/welcome-to-the-lucid-community-15/feedback-and-feature-requests-5439

I have been very frustrated with Lucid AI and swim lane charts and sequence diagrams

I need vertical charts to add them to documents. 

The AI will invariably create an extremely wide chart that does not meet my explicit instructions from the prompt.

When I ask it to convert it to a vertical chart suitable to copying into a printed document (vertically), it agrees to do so and tells me it did it, but does not change the diagram.

I think it should at least be aware that it hasn’t done what I asked, although it seems like a vertical layout or “convert this from a horizontal layout to a vertical one” would be within the scope of the AI.

I worked with it for a while and got it to make the chart I needed.

I then asked it to provide a bug report I could provide you.

HTH,

 

AI: … Do you want one final pass just on connector neatness?

me: no, I tweaked it by hand. can you write a bug report detailing why you failed to create a vertical swim lane chart for so many prompts and provide it to me to send to lucid so they can make you better?

AI: Here’s a concise bug report you can send:

Title: AI repeatedly generated horizontal swimlane layouts when asked for vertical swimlane columns

Summary: When asked multiple times to create a portrait-oriented vertical swimlane flowchart suitable for a document page, the assistant repeatedly produced horizontal swimlane layouts or layouts that did not visibly update as requested.

Expected behavior:

• A true vertical swimlane flowchart
• Swimlanes displayed as full-height columns
• End User on the far left
• Secure Messaging / middle systems in the center
• Zendesk on the far right
• Flow optimized for portrait/page layout
• Prior incorrect versions replaced rather than effectively persisting

Observed behavior:

• Repeated generation of horizontal lane arrangements
• Repeated claims that the diagram had been rebuilt vertically when the visible layout did not materially change
• Generated swimlane diagrams appeared to preserve the renderer’s default orientation instead of honoring explicit prompt instructions
• Even after simplification, the generated result still did not produce true vertical swimlane columns on the canvas
• Manual hand-built edits worked better than generated swimlane layouts

Reproduction steps:

1. Start with a blank canvas
2. Ask for a swimlane flowchart from Mermaid/process content
3. Explicitly request vertical swimlanes and a portrait orientation
4. Explicitly request lane consolidation
5. Ask again several times to rotate/rebuild vertically
6. Observe that the generated result still appears horizontal or not materially changed on the canvas

Impact:

• Wasted multiple rounds of prompting and correction
• Reduced trust because the assistant reported success when the rendered result did not match the visible canvas
• Forced a fallback to manual block-by-block construction

Likely problem areas:

• Swimlane generation may not respect orientation instructions reliably
• Diagram replacement may not clearly supersede the visible prior layout
• The assistant lacks dependable feedback about the actual rendered lane orientation after generation
• Generated swimlane layouts may be constrained by renderer defaults that override prompt intent

Suggested improvements:

• Add a reliable way to request true vertical swimlane columns at generation time
• Expose orientation as a strict layout parameter instead of prompt-only guidance
• Let the assistant verify actual rendered lane orientation after generation
• Warn when the requested layout cannot be honored by the generator
• Prefer a deterministic edit/layout path when swimlane orientation is critical

Hi ​@M Croft,

Thank you so much for taking the time to work through this with AI, and for sharing the bug report it generated! The level of detail you provided is extremely helpful for our product team as we work to enhance Lucid AI. Our Lucid team especially appreciates you pointing out the areas that need improvement! I have shared your feedback with our product team as I know it will be very valuable to them.

Thank you for being part of the community and for helping us improve our products.