{"slug": "mermaid-to-ascii-art-mermaid-ascii", "title": "Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)", "summary": "Simon Willison compiled the Go library AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii to WebAssembly, creating a tool that converts Mermaid diagrams to ASCII art with color support. The tool is available online and offers an alternative to a previous Rust-based version.", "body_md": "**Tool:** [Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)](https://tools.simonwillison.net/mermaid-ascii)\n\nAfter building the [Mermaid to ASCII tool based on Grok Build's Rust code](https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/grok-mermaid/) I learned that there's an older, more fully-featured Go library called [AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii](https://github.com/AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii) that implements a similar pattern, so I had Claude Fable 5 compile that one to WebAssembly as well so I could compare the two.\n\nThis one includes support for colors!\n\nTags: [go](https://simonwillison.net/tags/go), [tools](https://simonwillison.net/tags/tools), [webassembly](https://simonwillison.net/tags/webassembly), [mermaid](https://simonwillison.net/tags/mermaid)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mermaid-to-ascii-art-mermaid-ascii", "canonical_source": "https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/mermaid-ascii/#atom-everything", "published_at": "2026-07-16 14:57:39+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-17 00:02:23.170282+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools"], "entities": ["Simon Willison", "AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii", "Claude Fable 5", "WebAssembly"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mermaid-to-ascii-art-mermaid-ascii", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mermaid-to-ascii-art-mermaid-ascii.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mermaid-to-ascii-art-mermaid-ascii.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/mermaid-to-ascii-art-mermaid-ascii.jsonld"}}