We opted for Mermaid (mentioned in your article) and auto-layout in our new offering.

As you would expect, it has its pros and its cons. As diagrams get bigger and more complex, mermaid's auto-layout gets more and more challenged and more and more acres of white space start to appear. Of course drawing those same large diagrams manually would be a bitch too.

At small scale, auto-layout is a no-brainer, but the jury is still out for us on large, real world diagrams.