Mermaid to Unicode Box Art: Introducing grok-mermaid
Score
73介绍了新的开源工具，可能不为大众所知，有一定信息增量。
内容清晰，来自技术博客，质量较高。
对终端和纯文本环境下的图表展示有直接帮助，实用价值高。
发布于2026年7月16日，非常新。
Simon Willison是知名技术博主，信源可靠。
Base 81.5 × T2 Source weight ×0.9 = 73
Curation line 70Selected
Why selected
This tool is highly practical, filling the gap of diagram display in plain-text environments.
AI commentary
「This tool addresses the pain point of displaying diagrams in plain-text environments, especially for developers who like embedding diagrams in terminals and code comments. It's worth paying attention to.」
Quick overview
Simon Willison introduces grok-mermaid, an open-source tool that converts Mermaid diagrams into Unicode box art. It uses grok to parse Mermaid syntax and generates plain-text Unicode box art suitable for terminals, code comments, and other text-only environments. The tool is lightweight and efficient, requiring no graphical rendering. Key technical aspects include Mermaid parsing, Unicode box generation, and integration with other tools.
- grok-mermaid converts Mermaid flowcharts, sequence diagrams, etc., into Unicode box art
- Plain text output suitable for terminals and code comments
- Based on grok parser for high performance
Full text
Showing the source text; the full translation is being generated.
Tool: Mermaid to Unicode box art (grok-mermaid)
While exploring the codebase for the newly open-sourced Grok CLI coding agent I came across xai-grok-markdown/src/mermaid.rs, a "self-contained terminal renderer for Mermaid diagrams" written in Rust.
I figured it would be fun to try that out in a browser via WebAssembly. Here's the prompt I ran in Claude Code for web (Fable 5), and this is what the resulting tool looks like:
![Screenshot of a Mermaid diagram editor showing source code and rendered flowchart. The code reads: graph TD Start[Request received] --> Auth{Authenticated?} Auth -->|yes| Rate{Rate limit OK?} Auth -->|no| R401[401 Unauthorized] Rate -->|yes| H(Handle request) Rate -->|no| R429[429 Too Many Requests] H -.-> Log[Audit log] H ==> Resp[200 OK]. Below the code are controls labeled Max width: Fit output panel, Copy as text, and Copy link to this diagram. The rendered flowchart on a dark background flows top-down: Request received leads to Authenticated?, which branches yes to Rate limit OK? and no to 401 Unauthorized. Rate limit OK? branches yes to Handle request and no to 429 Too Many Requests. Handle request connects with a dotted arrow to Audit log and a thick arrow to 200 OK.](https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/grok-mermaid-wasm.png)
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