# Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)

> Source: <https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/mermaid-ascii/#atom-everything>
> Published: 2026-07-16 14:57:39+00:00

**Tool:** [Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)](https://tools.simonwillison.net/mermaid-ascii)

After 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.

This one includes support for colors!

Tags: [go](https://simonwillison.net/tags/go), [tools](https://simonwillison.net/tags/tools), [webassembly](https://simonwillison.net/tags/webassembly), [mermaid](https://simonwillison.net/tags/mermaid)