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?

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

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

Key features

7 universal building blocks: Person, Step, Storage, Decision, Trigger, Tool, Channel
Deterministic runtime with animated packet flow and live metrics
Stress test scenarios (peak traffic, outages, latency injection)
Runtime panel with overview, stability analysis, and stress test tabs
AI chat assistant for design generation and Q&A
Programmable component behaviors (filter, queue, split, merge, delay, condition, retry, ratelimit, circuitbreaker, batch, replicate)
Infrastructure config per component: protocol selection and scaling (min/max instances, scale trigger)
7 templates: 5 behavior lessons, 2 real-world examples
Version snapshots and project history
Export to PNG, animated GIF, JSON backup, System Spec, Python scaffold, and AI-generated PRD
Interactive guided tour for new users