Beautiful Mermaid ASCII Rendering
Use lukilabs/beautiful-mermaid (a JS library, not a CLI) to turn Mermaid diagrams into terminal-friendly ASCII/Unicode art.
Quick start
Render a Mermaid file:
skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii path/to/diagram.mmd
Install a clean mermaid-ascii command on your PATH (symlink into ~/.local/bin by default):
skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/install-mermaid-ascii
Render from stdin:
cat path/to/diagram.mmd | skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii
Render the first Mermaid fenced block from Markdown:
skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii --md README.md
Select a different fenced block (1-based):
skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii --md README.md --block 2
Installation approach (how this skill “deals with installing”)
scripts/mermaid-ascii auto-installs beautiful-mermaid into a writable cache directory (defaults to $XDG_CACHE_HOME/beautiful-mermaid-ascii, or /tmp/beautiful-mermaid-ascii) when needed, then runs the renderer.
If you want a “real” command on your PATH, prefer the symlink installer:
skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/install-mermaid-ascii
You can also install this folder as a local/global npm package (use a writable npm cache if your ~/.npm is not writable):
# from the repo root
NPM_CONFIG_CACHE=/tmp/npm-cache npm install -g --prefix ~/.local ./skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii
If you already have beautiful-mermaid installed in the current project, run with:
skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii --pkg-dir . path/to/diagram.mmd
Troubleshooting
- If installs fail due to permission errors in
~/.npmor~/Library/Caches, run with a writable cache directory:skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii --cache-dir /tmp/bm-cache ...
- If output is empty, verify the Mermaid text is valid and starts with a diagram type (
flowchart,sequenceDiagram, etc.). - For multiple diagrams in Markdown, use
--listto enumerate fenced blocks and choose one with--block.
Bundled resources
skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii: Shell wrapper that ensures dependencies are available, then renders.skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/scripts/mermaid-ascii.mjs: Node CLI that extracts Mermaid (raw or from Markdown fences) and callsrenderMermaidAscii.skills/beautiful-mermaid-ascii/references/notes.md: Small notes about Mermaid inputs and common patterns.