TG: Programming: Lucidchart vs. Claude

Home - Programming - Lucidchart vs. Claude

As I start to lean in on using AI to get multiple projects done at the same time, I've also tried to find AIs that can help with more mundane tasks, things I could do myself, but I want to do quicker, and anything that can make design documentation faster, cleaner, and more understandable would be a tool I'd use frequently.

To that end I made a decision unfortunately made entirely on reading marketing material and watching a couple of Youtube introduction videos. I got a subscription for Lucidchart.

Alright, quick confession: I got a trial for Lucidchart and then failed to cancel it before I was billed for a year. That's on me. I have a reminder my calendar to cancel before it renews next year.

In the mean time, I'm going to top using Lucidchart because it's literally a waste of my time. The last two times I used it, I had Claude Code help me in constructing what we thought would be foolproof prompts, full of detail about content, construction, and presentation, and in the end I had to take the miserable result and pass it back to Claude Code to fix. This last time, I asked Claude if there was an easier way.

ME: Okay, now here's a question for future endeavors: Could you have made that chart from scratch using the prompt we created for LucidChart? Do I actually need LucidChart for these types of things?

CLAUDE: No, you don't need LucidChart for this. As you just saw, I built the entire diagram from scratch using the storyboard description -- proper shapes, colors, anchored arrows, embedded labels, and a legend -- all without LucidChart touching it.

And he's not wrong. In every case, Lucidchart contributed nothing, cost me time, and stressed me out. I can actually converse with Claude about how I want the final result to be, the purpose, what I'm trying to communicate, and all that steers the process and result.

So there ya go. If someone from Lucidchart wants to jump in and explain how they're going to improve the product, they have a year to convince me to renew my subscription. Right now it's not looking so good...