Import a whiteboard photo or a Mermaid file

Three ways in

At the bottom of the chat panel, in the row just above the message box, 📎 Import flow opens a file picker for PNG, JPEG, WebP and GIF images and .mmd, .mermaid, .md or .txt Mermaid files. Drag a file anywhere onto the chat panel and an overlay reads “Drop to import the flow”, with “screenshot or Mermaid file” beneath. Or paste an image straight into the message box. Whichever way, a chip appears above the box with a thumbnail or file name and the note “will be imported as a flow”; ✕ removes it.

What the agent does with it

The rules are explicit. Read every node, edge label and branch and translate faithfully: decisions become .if/.then blocks; failure outcomes become .fail with the recovery edges as the lines after it; loop or return edges become .back to the earlier step with the edge’s label as its caption; labels on ordinary arrows become a “: caption” on the line the arrow leaves; jumps to other processes become .go or .do. If part of the image is unreadable, it imports what is legible and adds a .note listing what needs checking. It is told never to invent steps that are not there.

Then it decides where the flow belongs. If it is clearly the same process as the open document, or you said “merge”, the reply is a merged version of the two, shown as a diff you Apply or Discard. If it is a different process, or you said “new”, Runic creates a new document with the name the agent chose, switches to it, types it in and confirms “Imported as a new process: ‘<name>’ ✓”.

Before it leaves your browser

Images are downscaled in the browser to at most 1,568 px on the long side and re-encoded — JPEG stays JPEG at 90 % quality, everything else becomes PNG — so a 12 MB whiteboard photo does not travel as 12 MB. If the file is still over about 5 MB after downscaling, Runic refuses it in the browser: “That image is too large even after downscaling — try a tighter crop.” The server applies the same cap. Mermaid files are read as plain text, first 20,000 characters.

Quality gates

A message with an attachment always routes to Claude Opus 5 with a larger output budget. When the result is a process, it goes through the parser and structural audit with one bounded repair pass before you see it, and the automatic structural check posts anything that is still off — as soon as a new document is created, or when you apply a merge.

Limits

Type something with the attachment — Send is inactive on an empty message; “import as new” or “merge into this” is enough and steers the decision. One file per message. Attaching a file replaces a pinned selection chip. The new document takes the kind of the document that is open, so open a process before importing a flowchart and a sequence diagram before importing a sequence. Imports count against the 60-messages-an-hour chat limit.

How to use it

1. 1
   Open the right kind of document

   A process for a flowchart or whiteboard, a sequence diagram for a sequence. The new document takes the open document’s kind.
2. 2
   Attach the flow

   Click 📎 Import flow at the bottom of the chat panel and pick the file, drag it onto the panel, or paste a screenshot into the message box.
3. 3
   Check the chip

   A thumbnail or file name shows above the box with “will be imported as a flow”. Click ✕ to remove it.
4. 4
   Say what to do with it

   Type “import as new” or “merge into this” (or anything more specific) and press Enter.
5. 5
   Review the result

   A new document opens and types in, or a merge arrives as a diff — Apply or Discard. Read the structural check that follows and fix anything from the chat.

Commands & shortcuts

Tips

• Crop the photo to the diagram. Less glare and fewer margins mean fewer “needs checking” notes.
• For Mermaid, export the diagram source (.mmd) rather than a rendered PNG — text imports without any reading errors.
• Say “merge into this” when the whiteboard is a later version of the open process; you get a diff instead of a duplicate document.
• Arrow labels become captions and loops become .back lines — check them in the diagram preview before applying a merge.

Questions