console-mermaid

Render Mermaid diagrams as ASCII/Unicode in the terminal.

This is a Rust port of the original Go mermaid-ascii project by AlexanderGrooff, and focuses on producing readable, deterministic console output for flowcharts and sequence diagrams.

Features

• Renders Mermaid flowcharts and sequence diagrams to text
• Supports Unicode box drawing or ASCII-only output
• Adjustable box and node spacing
• Reads from a file or stdin

Install

Build locally:

cargo build --release

Run directly:

cargo run -- --help

Install globally with Cargo:

cargo install --git https://github.com/AlextheYounga/console-mermaid.git

Make sure Cargo's bin directory is on your PATH (usually ~/.cargo/bin).

Usage

# From a file
cargo run -- path/to/diagram.mmd

# From stdin
cat path/to/diagram.mmd | cargo run -- -

Common options

• --ascii use ASCII-only characters
• --coords show layout coordinates (debug)
• --box-padding <n> box padding inside nodes
• --padding-x <n> horizontal spacing between nodes
• --padding-y <n> vertical spacing between nodes
• --graph-direction <LR|TD> override graph direction

Example

flowchart TD
A["Start"] --> B["End"]

cargo run -- --ascii - <<'EOF'
flowchart TD
A["Start"] --> B["End"]
EOF

Credits

This project is a Rust port of the original Go implementation by AlexanderGrooff: https://github.com/AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii