Mermaid to ASCII art (mermaid-ascii)

This article describes a tool that converts Mermaid diagram syntax into ASCII and Unicode box-drawing art, rendered entirely in the browser via a Go library compiled to WebAssembly. It supports flowcharts with labeled edges, subgraphs, and color definitions, as well as sequence diagrams with notes and control flow fragments. The author built the tool based on Grok Build's Rust code but later discovered an older, more feature-rich Go library (AlexanderGrooff/mermaid-ascii) that includes color support. They compiled that Go library to WebAssembly using Claude Fable 5 for comparison. The tool offers customizable padding and output options.