What is Neural Sketch

A Diagramming System for Precision Communication

In research, clarity is not a luxury—it's a necessity. Every diagram in a paper shapes how the paper is perceived, understood, and ultimately received—it often becomes the lens through which the reader interprets the entire argument. But creating precise, expressive visuals in $\LaTeX$ often means wading through boilerplate, managing brittle styles, and sacrificing aesthetics for feasibility.

Neural Sketch is a modern diagramming toolkit for researchers who care about how their ideas look—and how clearly they read.

It is built on three foundational ideas:

• An opinionated default system for producing crisp, publication-ready figures out of the box.
• A deeply customizable key–value model that exposes full control when you need to go beyond the default.
• A transportable design philosophy that acknowledges figures aren't static—they're meant to move. Neural Sketch encourages reusability across media: from papers to slides, interactive tutorials, and web visualizations. Its modular architecture and clear abstractions help ensure that your diagrams adapt cleanly, without rework, across formats and contexts.

Together, these three principles make Neural Sketch not just a drawing package—but a design system for technical communication.

Why It Exists

In technical writing, we often face a frustrating tradeoff:

Speed versus polish. Flexibility versus sanity.

You can make beautiful $LaTeX$ diagrams—but not without investing time you probably don't have. Neural Sketch was built to collapse this tradeoff by offering:

• Predefined styling tuned for publication — good-looking diagrams, zero configuration.
• Sane defaults for geometry, layout, and color — everything is designed to "just work."
• Consistent internal rules — alignment, spacing, ID management, routing.
• Key–value extensibility — override only what matters, when it matters.

So you can start with a sketch and end with a paper-ready figure, without rewriting the whole diagram three times.

Who It's For

Neural Sketch was designed with AI and systems researchers in mind—those writing papers with:

• Neural network diagrams
• Optimization pipelines
• Algorithmic flowcharts
• Training-evaluation visualizations
• Architectural schematics

But its design is not domain-locked. If your work involves structured, abstract processes, multi-stage systems, or graph-like logic, Neural Sketch gives you a language to express them with precision and control.

Under the Hood

Neural Sketch is built on modern $\LaTeX3$:

• Internally powered by expl3 and l3keys for robust modularity
• Builds atop low-level PGF primitives and extends $TikZ$ for rendering and layout—while also allowing you to interleave raw $TikZ$ code when needed. This ensures a smooth experience for those familiar with $TikZ$, letting you mix precision customizations into Neural Sketch diagrams without breaking flow.
• Actively developed with l3build for long-term stability

It's purpose-built for visual reasoning—implemented on $expl3$.

Opinionated Defaults, Optional Control

Every diagram element in Neural Sketch is governed by a shared philosophy:

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. – Edsger W. Dijkstra

For example:

You never fight the system. You collaborate with it.

Design for Iteration

Diagrams are never final on the first pass. Neural Sketch helps you work the way researchers actually work:

• You sketch quickly with placeholder content.
• You position things relatively, without hardcoding coordinates.
• You annotate inline, and let Neural Sketch manage alignment and spacing.
• You scale up from two blocks to a full architecture, without rewriting everything.
• You refactor layouts midstream—splitting diagrams across columns, adapting them from one-column to two-column formats, or recomposing them to fit into new narrative flows. Neural Sketch’s declarative layout logic makes these adjustments fluid and resilient.

This makes it ideal for papers in progress, collaborative drafts, or iterative experiments.

Focused on Authoring Experience

Beyond its technical capabilities, Neural Sketch is designed with the authoring experience in mind. It eliminates friction in diagram creation, providing an intuitive workflow that helps you iterate faster (especially during resubmissions or review cycles) without ever leaving your diagrams behind. It helps decouple journal or conference design constraints from your actual visual ideas.

By seamlessly blending automation, predefined aesthetics, and deep customizability, Neural Sketch ensures that every diagram remains coherent, expressive, and publication-ready—whether you're sketching a quick idea or refining a figure for a top-tier venue.

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What You Get

Out of the box:

• Publication-ready diagrams with zero tuning
• A minimal syntax that matches your mental model
• Support for customization when needed, without overwhelming complexity

Whether you're writing for NeurIPS, ICML, or just trying to explain your model to a collaborator, Neural Sketch helps you draw with clarity, intention, and elegance.

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