Describe your system the way you think about it.
Basalt is a small declarative language for network, OT and cloud architecture. You write zones, devices and the conduits between them in plain text — Basalt turns it into a living, versionable diagram of your architecture.
Zones draw the boundaries.
A zone is the top-level container of a Basalt file — a network segment, a security tier, a cloud account. Everything you declare lives inside one, and Basalt renders each zone as a distinct region with its own color and border. Add [level:] for the Purdue hierarchy — 0 is the physical process, 5 is the enterprise.
Nest structure inside structure.
A cell is a process area inside a zone — an assembly line, a plant subsystem. Where zones are network tiers, cells group what’s physically together: a local controller plus the sensors and actuators around it.
Edges are the story.
An edge is a directed connection between two nodes — a call, a stream, a control link. Direction is part of the syntax: source > target, and the arrowhead lands on the target. Edges cross zones freely — that top-to-bottom flow is the whole point of a correct diagram.
Nodes are the things that run.
Services, databases, PLCs, sensors, people — a node is anything worth a box on the map. Declare it inside a zone with a name and an icon. The name is both the label you see and the identifier edges reference.
SCADA Server > Main PLC reads exactly like the boxes it connects. Unresolved icon slugs render as a visible subtitle, so a typo shows on the canvas instead of failing silently.
A shared visual vocabulary.
Basalt ships a built-in library of 1,900+ icons — AWS, Azure, GCP, Cisco, PLC and SCADA vendors, plus industrial, hardware and security glyphs. Search by keyword and drop one in with [icon: slug].
