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Mmdr

1000x faster Mermaid rendering in pure Rust (no browser)

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I was building a Rust-based agentic coding TUI and needed to render Mermaid diagrams. Noticed the official mermaid-cli spawns a full browser instance (Puppeteer/Chrome) just to render diagrams. Decided to fix this.mmdr is a native Rust renderer. No browser, no Node.js. mermaid-cli: ~3000ms per diagram mmdr: ~3ms per diagram Supports 13 diagram types: flowchart, sequence, class, state, ER, pie, gantt, timeline, journey, mindmap, git graph, XY chart, and quadrant.

HN · launched Feb 4, 2026 · 47 upvotes (top 19%) · 0 views

Niche: diagramming and flowchart tools · 116 launches, 6 in the last 7 days ▼ -50% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags
  • Horizontal
  • Dev tools
  • Developer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

More like this: all 116 launches in diagramming and flowchart tools →

Could you build this?

No Building a pure native Rust renderer that parses Mermaid syntax, performs layout calculations, and rasterizes graphics without a browser engine is a complex graphics engineering endeavor.

What it would actually take: This project requires writing or integrating a complete Mermaid syntax parser, implementing complex graph layout algorithms (such as Sugiyama-style hierarchical graph layout or force-directed algorithms), and a font metrics/rendering pipeline without browser dependencies. It then needs a vector/raster 2D rendering backend (like resvg, skia, or piet) to output SVGs or images accurately. This demands specialized knowledge in graph theory, geometry, and low-level computer graphics.

Discussion

8 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: mermaid-cli, mermaid (original JavaScript version), md2cb

Concerns raised: Whether it's a drop-in replacement for mermaid-cli, Speedup mainly from browser spawning vs actual execution, WASM version performance comparison to browser implementation

Feature requests: Typst plugin support for mermaid diagrams, WASM build for browser usage

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 186 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #57 of 187 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 93 days after the earliest competitor.

  • Line9 · hn · 2026-08-06 · 87 upvotes · similarity 0.63
  • Ferrite · hn · 2026-01-11 · 241 upvotes · similarity 0.61
  • Mermaid Design · ph · 2026-10-03 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.58
  • Visimer · hn · 2026-08-17 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.53
  • Diagrammar · ph · 2026-10-01 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.49
  • Vloam Mermaid · ph · 2026-09-15 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.48
  • FlowPeek · ph · 2026-09-11 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.47
  • Doska · ph · 2026-10-27 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.47

Related data

The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.