Mermaid to Unicode box art (grok-mermaid)
- ID
- 5065
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 16 Jul 2026, 8:33 AM
- Fetched
- 16 Jul 2026, 8:42 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/grok-mermaid/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 7.0
- Created
- 16 Jul 2026, 8:42 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_agent_users
What happened
Simon Willison discovered a Rust-based terminal renderer for Mermaid diagrams inside the newly open-sourced Grok CLI codebase and compiled it to WebAssembly to run in a browser. The result is a tool that converts Mermaid diagram syntax into Unicode box art, making diagrams viewable in plain text environments.
Why it matters
For developers and vibe coders, this is a handy way to render Mermaid diagrams in terminals, plain text, or environments without full graphics support. It also demonstrates a practical pattern: finding useful Rust modules in open-sourced AI tooling and quickly porting them to the browser via WebAssembly.
Discussion angle
How open-sourced AI coding agents like Grok CLI are becoming a source of reusable building blocks, and whether Malaysian builders should be mining these codebases for practical tools they can adapt.