Is there a specific tool you use to figure out your design graph, or is it more a 'mind' thing? I know there's some vscode plugins to kinda visualize how code fits together, etc.
It's more of like doing system designing (pre-planning), the system design stage is way of looking at the bigger picture by connecting the dots, and yh, it could be a mind thing but I mostly use my pen and paper or if it's something that's really difficult to nail, I use the C4 modeling (you can use whiteboard, paper or any C4 modeling tool).
C4 modeling would give you the abstract design or system architecture graph, you don't have to do all 4 levels diagram, just do the one that makes sense to you.
If you are doing something simple, you might not need to do any of that but as soon as you are building something of scale with optimal security not doing system designing is like building a skyscraper with no design, well, you know what might go wrong :)
In a DAW(Digital Audio Workstation), this is like adjusting the knobs, adding effects when you haven't even added any samples, it just doesn't make any sense, stop forcing yourself to do things that doesn't align with your flow, you'll likely get annoyed for no reason.
The way I work is I do the architecture design, I write the code, then I write my test by following the design graph.
If I don't know what the design would look like, I do what I call "code freestyling" to get a basic idea of what the overall design would look like then I repeat the above step.