Introduction
Chinilla is a visual design tool for mapping out systems, workflows, and architectures. Drop components on a canvas, wire them together, run a deterministic simulation to see where it stalls or breaks, and iterate with AI chat to fix what the runtime reveals.
What can you design?
Section titled “What can you design?”Anything with moving parts:
- Software backends (microservices, event-driven, monoliths)
- Restaurants (order flow, kitchen stations, delivery)
- Hospitals (patient triage, ER workflows, resource allocation)
- Factories (assembly lines, quality control, logistics)
- Logistics networks (routing, warehousing, last-mile delivery)
System design is about first principles, not memorized patterns. Chinilla gives you the canvas to think visually and the tools to stress-test your thinking.
Core loop
Section titled “Core loop”- Design - Place components and wire them on the canvas
- Simulate - Deterministic runtime injects load and shows packet flow, queues, and drops
- Stress test - Push your design with peak traffic, outages, and latency injection
- Analyze - Review stability metrics, health scores, and bottleneck data in the runtime panel
- Revise - Fix weaknesses using AI chat or manual edits, then iterate
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Getting Started - Full introduction and key features
- Canvas Basics - Learn the canvas and component system
- AI Features - Use AI to generate and refine designs
- Runtime - Run simulations and stress tests
- Lessons - Interactive guided courses inside the IDE