Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)
- ID
- 5421
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 16 Jul 2026, 10:57 PM
- Fetched
- 17 Jul 2026, 8:14 AM
- Provider
- Simon Willison
- Category
- developer-ai
- Original URL
- https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/mermaid-ascii/
- Source URL
- https://simonwillison.net/atom/everything/
Summary
- Score
- 6.5
- Created
- 17 Jul 2026, 8:14 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coders
What happened
Simon Willison shares a Mermaid-to-ASCII-art tool compiled from a Go library (AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii) to WebAssembly, adding color support and comparing it to a Rust-based alternative. The tool lets developers render Mermaid diagrams as ASCII art directly in environments that can't display images.
Why it matters
For developers and vibe coders who work in terminals, markdown previews, or plain-text contexts, ASCII-rendered Mermaid diagrams make architecture and flowchart sharing practical without image dependencies. The WebAssembly compilation approach is a useful pattern for bringing CLI-style libraries into browser-based tools.
Discussion angle
How WebAssembly lets you reuse existing Go/Rust libraries for browser tools, and whether ASCII diagrams are genuinely useful for your team's docs or just a novelty.