One command to create an exploded view of any object

Developer Jakub Krehel recently added a new skill to his command-line toolset: /teardown. It can generate technical diagrams of any object—from hard drives and mechanical structures to abstract concepts—breaking them down into exploded views. You can customize parts, colors, and annotations, then export SVG or PNG.

Installation:

npx skills add jakubkrehel/skills

Jakub says the inspiration came from the teardown illustrations at teenage engineering's SoHo store. Those black-and-white exploded views label every part with a number and feel very engineering-minded.

After seeing it, some commenters said exploded views should appear in every manual. Others noted the value of editable annotations: changing one note doesn't require regenerating the entire image, making it better suited to technical documentation. One commenter asked whether the SVG export groups elements by part, to make assembly documents easier to adjust. Currently it only supports isometric views, but it may be improved later.

A more unusual use case came from a developer who plans to try it on non-physical objects. Another developer used it for animated websites and 2D motion effects and shared a demo:

Others want it to annotate by referencing existing part diagrams, or when making repair guides, mark damaged parts in red and gray out other components. These requests all point in the same direction: technical documentation will become more intuitive.

You may not need to draw exploded views, but if you need to explain complex structures to others, this skill is worth a try.