Gantt charts from an AI reply: project schedules and thesis timelines

The prompt for gantt code, date formats and sections, dependencies with after, milestones and status tags, axis labels, and turning off the today marker so exports stay stable.

About 4 minUpdated 2026-09-06

The prompt

Draw a Gantt chart in Mermaid for the project: master's thesis, from the proposal on 2026-09-15 to the defence on 2027-05-20. Requirements: reply with one complete mermaid code block only, the first line must be gantt, include dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD, group tasks with section.

Give it the key dates and phases and the reply follows your calendar; otherwise it invents dates you will have to edit.

A typical result

mermaidOpen in the editor
gantt
    title Thesis schedule
    dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
    axisFormat %b %d
    todayMarker off
    section Proposal
    Literature review     :done, a1, 2026-09-15, 20d
    Proposal document     :done, a2, after a1, 10d
    Proposal defence      :milestone, m1, 2026-10-20, 0d
    section Research
    Data collection       :active, b1, 2026-10-21, 30d
    Modelling and experiments :b2, after b1, 45d
    Analysis              :b3, after b2, 20d
    section Writing
    First draft           :c1, after b3, 30d
    Revision and checks   :crit, c2, after c1, 20d
    Defence               :milestone, m2, 2027-05-20, 0d

Edit the text, switch themes and download PNG, Word or PowerPoint from there.

Syntax at a glance

  • Dates: dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD sets the input format; axisFormat %b %d sets how the axis labels are shown (month and day).
  • Sections: section Name; the tasks below belong to it and are drawn as a band.
  • Task lines: Task name :tags, id, start, duration or end. Durations are 20d (days) or 2w (weeks); an end date works too.
  • Dependencies: after a1 starts right after a1 ends; after a1 a2 waits for the later of the two.
  • Status tags: done, active, crit (critical path, red outline), milestone (a diamond, duration 0d). Tags come first after the colon.
  • Today marker: todayMarker off hides the vertical “today” line. For a thesis plan or anything you send to others, turn it off, or the chart looks different every day.

Editing

Gantt charts are edited in the code: dates, durations and names are all on their own lines. To shift a whole phase, change the start date of its first task; tasks chained with after move along.

There is no double-click editing and no direction control; the width follows the total span, so switch to ×3 before exporting a long timeline.

The hand-drawn look

Gantt charts work with the hand-drawn themes too: the bars get sketchy hatched fills while the axis stays straight, so dates are still easy to read. Change the data in the code; charts like this were never meant to be dragged.

Export

Schedules usually end up in slides: “Export PowerPoint (pptx)” embeds a 3x image that fills a landscape slide. For the team, “Export PDF” or “Copy PNG to clipboard”. The template library has project schedule, product launch, event planning and thesis schedule Gantt charts.

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