- Mermaid within .md is widely supported. The file format of .mmd, while supported in most integrations, is a standalone file rather than living within my documentation/markdown. I use Mermaid charts and graphs as visual aids to add to the documentation or notes rather than having them stand alone. If I wanted a standalone file, I'd use any other diagram tool with its proprietary file format. I like Meriamid because of how easy it is to integrate into markdown. The value isn't in having a Mermaid file; the value is in adding diagrams and charts to markdown.
- Within .md files there's a Mermaid logo added beside the Mermaid, but it doesn't seem to be clickable or have a context menu. Maybe this is a bug. It also weirdly highlights all of the Mermaid code. Why doesn't it syntax highlight within markdown? This extension works great for highlighting: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/?itemName=bpruitt...
- It doesn't add support for viewing mermaid within markdown preview. I currently use this extension for it. This is a key feature that is missing. https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items/?itemName=bierner...
Overall, excited to see what this becomes. Hope this is useful feedback! It can only get better from here.
They're a for-profit company using the Mermaid name.
This creates a lot of confusion whenever the name comes up, which I suspect is deliberate.
See also Redis labs, Gitlab, ElasticSearch...
They could have called it something entirely different, and then they can say (vscode plugin for mermaid.js) every time they mention their unique name that carries no association with it.
And Mermaid could have decided they want exclusive use of the name and trademarked it half a decade ago.
So it's just fair use, isn't it?
Honestly, I'm surprised anyone on HN would defend that sort of behavior.
I am Knut Sveidqvist, the inventor of Mermaid and creator of the Mermaid open-source project. I'm also the co-founder of Mermaid Chart.
To address the confusion: Mermaid Chart is not a separate entity "profiting off the name" - it's a commercial offering I created to help sustain the open-source project. Working on Mermaid during evenings and weekends became unsustainable as the project grew. Mermaid Chart allows me to work on what I love full-time while providing resources back to the open-source project. This support will continue to grow as our business matures.
I appreciate your concern about protecting users from deceptive practices. In this case, there is a direct connection between the open-source project and the commercial offering, created by the same founding team.
For diagramming and even UI prototyping I keep getting back to plain old ascii drawings though. Asciiflow.com is fantastic. I just wish they had vim keybindings. It's also great to embed in .md too. Could mermaid generate ascii? It just seems easier to comprehend and doesn't need a separate renderer.
It's not uncommon for companies to piggyback off an open source project's success and mislead people into thinking it's theirs. Seemed an awful lot like that was the case here.
If you do not trademark your name then I can only assume you do not want exclusive control of that name - I certainly wouldn't assume you want the protections a trademark grants.
To me it sounds like when open source project resenting a very-permissive license just after someone else turns it into a profit machine. Kind of sucks but also the whole point of that permissive license is you shouldn't care.
Saying "that's legal; if they didn't want it to happen they'd have trademarked" is the correct response. We can socially shame a behaviour on a random comment section on the internet, or we can actually provide the solution to all future people: trademark it if you want it.
I use it mostly for sequence diagrams, but never hit a case where Mermaid felt better than PlantUML. It has been more of a forced transition as SaaS like Notion don't have a PlantUML integration or it's not available at the organization level.
Once you have the diagram code, you can use that as an artifact for new LLM chats related to databases, APIs, etc.
I'm not sure what the history of mermaidchart.com specifically is, but I'm guessing it's new since the ER diagram docs are marked as "coming soon":
https://docs.mermaidchart.com/mermaid/er/syntax
I'm curious how this plugin compares to Markdown Preview Mermaid Support: https://marketplace.cursorapi.com/items?itemName=bierner.mar...
Though, I’ve used it to generate visuals of pipelines too and find it often takes coaching similar to any output that requires very high precision.
Another bit is that gpt4o and sonnet both seem to want to put syntax breaking parentheses in and struggle to avoid continuing to do so.
Once it’s right, though it is a valuable new context artifact to include in further problem solving on a domain.
among (many elaborate) other things it gave me - and I liked it (NB don't trust it willy nilly w.r.t. the below of course) - (auto-indented by 2 spaces hope formatting works) =>
```
DWARVEN PSYCHE DATA FLOW
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
External Events
(Trauma, Success, Social)
│
▼
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ Event Processing │─── Modulated by → Personality facets
│ (Emotion generation) │─── Modulated by → Personal values
└───────────┬─────────────┘
│ Generates
▼
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ Emotional Reactions │─── Short-term emotion (Anger, Joy, Sadness)
│ (Immediate Thoughts) │
└───────────┬─────────────┘
│ Stored as
▼
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ Memory Storage │─── Short-term → Long-term memories (core)
│ (Core & transient) │─── Decay/Replacement over time
└───────────┬─────────────┘
│ Recalled as
▼
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ Memory Re-experiencing │─── Repeated emotional impacts
│ (Periodic Thoughts) │
└───────────┬─────────────┘
│ Accumulate
▼
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ Stress Level │─── Increased by negative memories
│ (Running total score) │─── Decreased by positive memories
└───────────┬─────────────┘
│ Monitored
▼
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ Stress Threshold Check │─── If threshold breached → Psychological Crisis
│ │─── Else → Coping behaviors activated
└───────────┬─────────────┘
│
│
┌─────┴─────┐
│ │
▼ ▼
┌───────────┐ ┌─────────────────┐
│ Coping │ │ Psychological │
│Mechanisms │ │ Breakdown │
│(Needs met,│ │ (Tantrum, │
│ hardening,│ │ Depression, │
│ social) │ │ Insanity) │
└───────────┘ └─────────────────┘
│ │
│ ▼
│ ┌───────────────────┐
│ │ Personality Change│
└──────▶│ (Facet alterations│
│ via trauma, events│
└───────────────────┘
p.s. it chose the syntax/format itself; regardless, some time ago when asked for guidance re: how to manage sliding context window, it did suggest tables itself (user employing them for concise input - and likewise requesting tabulated/diagrammatic/schematic output).
p.p.s. (edit) many good very particular insights, if anyone's by chance interested then lmk, I'll ping once distilled interesting output is on a not-yet-extant blog (it's gonna happen finally)...
https://github.blog/developer-skills/github/include-diagrams...
https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/tools-and-tips/mermaid/
Had no real benefits, was way more cumbersome for almost everyone and honestly even me as a developer I'd rather have a few paragraphs instead of a diagram.
Somehow it's just never "readable"
I find that tools like Mermaid are pretty invaluable, especially when editing very large processes. Draw.io diagrams tend to get pretty unwieldy as they scale and editing inter process stuff if you forgot something quite frustrating.
Sequence diagrams are possibly my favorite feature in Mermaid: https://jessems.com/posts/2023-07-22-the-unreasonable-effect...
Admittedly I primarily use D2 nowadays. The only features I miss in D2 from mermaid are the GitHub automatic rendering and Sequence diagram numbers. https://play.d2lang.com
When I've used dot or mermaid to build diagrams I've always found it hard to specify layout, colours and sizes, which I use to emphasise different views on a system. I'd love some sort of middle ground where I get the benefits of version control but also the sketch-like character of excalidraw
My colleagues frequently use one of these general-purpose WYSIWYG drawing tools, and I'm not a fan at all – everybody has their own slightly or wildly varying riff on UML or flowcharts, and the result is chaos: Sometimes rectangles are states, sometimes they're decisions; sometimes arrows are labeled state transitions, but other times they're unlabeled and state transitions are also boxes.
Discoverability is also much worse compared to e.g. Mermaid or PlantUML diagrams checked into version control or stored as text source in Wiki articles.
I can blast out auto-reflowing flowcharts in Flying Logic on a keyboard but it's moved to a subscription model that doesn't make sense for my irregular use.
Seeing the connections in real time really helps with my thought process.
If you also want to interact with the diagram itself to make the changes, you can do that using the Mermaid Chart Playground: https://www.mermaidchart.com/play
Now, we have added lots of new functionality. Proper editing with syntax highlighting, etc. Apart from that, we have also added integration with GitHub Copilot, so you can generate diagrams from code and continue to edit them using the extension.