Render Mermaid diagrams as SVGs or ASCII art
github.com110 points by mellosouls 3 hours ago
110 points by mellosouls 3 hours ago
The ASCII output is the missing piece for AI-assisted coding workflows. LLMs can spit out Mermaid, but you can't see the diagram inline in a terminal/code-review context. This fixes that.
If you like Obsidian.md but can't quite recommend it for less technical folks, these devs' Craft notes spaces are a great alternative:
While great for individuals, it's particularly strong out-of-the-box for teams, or even teams of teams with two levels of grouping.
They bring the same ... craft (ahem) ... to the whole product as shown in their Craft Agents or this renderer, with a strong foundation originally started in the Markdown philosophy. Check out the founder's story on their About page for a refreshingly LLM-free backgrounder.
I love ASCII diagrams! The fact that I can write a diagram that looks equally wonderful in my terminal via cat as it does rendered on my website is incredible.
A good monospaced font and they can look really sharp!
I will definitely give this tool a shot.
I will also shout out monodraw as a really nice little application for building generic ASCII diagrams- https://monodraw.helftone.com/
Importantly they also render in your source code. I love a good diagram at the top of a file.
The actual Mermaid ASCII renderer is from another project [0]. This project transliterated it to typescript and added their own theming.
Wow! It has this:
Subgraph Direction Override: Using direction LR inside a subgraph while the outer graph flows TD.
The last time I checked, Mermaid couldn't render subgraphs in a different direction than the overall graph.
The live demo requires some download of an AI agent platform? I'd really like to try this but not if that's what's required.
The devs should really setup a client-only GitHub Pages for an accessible demo. Judging from skimming the project itself, it's definitely doable without locking into their platform.
I get a sense of deja vu. There was another such project posted within the last 3 months, and another within last 6 months. I should have bookmarked them, because at least one of them was an open library (I think).
I've had issues with other CLI wrappers there. ASCII output is a nice touch for including diagrams directly in code comments without breaking formatting. Does it handle large graphs well, or does the text wrap get messy? We tried using `graph-easy` for this before but the syntax was annoying. 6.
Pair this with Unicode plots[0] and you're set!
This is great, I will definitely make use of this!
How is the LaTeX compatibility? Base mermaid's LaTeX compatibility is quite sparse.
> Aesthetics — Might be personal preference, but wished they looked more professional
Im sold. Love mermaid but totally agree.