IdeaWell

Project ideas from Hacker News discussions.

Pele – Mermaid diagrams as themeable SVG

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

1. Pele offers a browser‑free way to render Mermaid
- nickmain: “Does the official Mermaid library still require a full or headless browser environment in order to lay out the SVG? If so, Pele is great news for embedding Mermaid rendering in other places.”

2. Users are frustrated by Mermaid’s layout quality
- lukeify: “Anytime I try mermaid for anything more complex than a toy diagram I always end up absolutely frustrated by the arcane and topologically poor layout that is produced.”
- invokestatic: “The layout/rendering can sometimes be very wonky. For instance I will have a bunch of connections crossing over each other instead of neatly arranged to avoid it.”

3. Interest in Pele’s open‑source status and playful name trivia
- Imustaskforhelp: “Edit: found it, https://github.com/obsidianmd/pele”
- druvisc: “Just FYI, ‘pele’ is ‘mouse’ in Latvian.” (followed by jokes about its meaning in Portuguese, Slovak, French, etc.)

🚀 Project Ideas

Generating project ideas…

MermaidLayout – Pure‑JS Mermaid Renderer with Advanced Layout Engines

Summary

  • Provides a headless‑browser‑free Mermaid → SVG renderer that plugs in Dagre/Elk for superior node placement and edge routing.
  • Core value: fast, embeddable diagram generation with layout quality comparable to desktop tools, ideal for docs, wikis, and AI‑generated notes.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, technical writers, Obsidian/Notion plugin builders
Core Feature Mermaid parsing + layout via Dagre/Elk, output SVG, zero DOM dependency
Tech Stack TypeScript, Rollup, Dagre.js, Elk.js (via WebAssembly/asm.js), Jest for testing
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • HN users complained about Mermaid’s “arcane and topologically poor layout” (lukeify) and wanted a lighter alternative to headless chrome (nickmain).
  • Could spark discussion on layout algorithms and be useful for CI pipelines that need fast SVG generation.

MermaidCI – GitHub Action for Diagram Linting & Layout Quality

Summary

  • Scans Mermaid blocks in markdown/repo files, validates syntax, detects common layout problems (edge crossings, overlapping nodes, ambiguous flow) and reports warnings.
  • Core value: automated diagram quality gate that keeps documentation clear and review‑friendly, reducing manual rework.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience DevOps engineers, docs maintainers, open‑source project maintainers
Core Feature CLI/GitHub Action that parses Mermaid, runs a lightweight layout checker (using Dagre/Elk logic) and emits SARIF or GitHub annotations
Tech Stack Node.js, TypeScript, @mermaid-js/mermaid-loader, Dagre.js, GitHub Action toolkit
Difficulty Low
Monetization Hobby

Notes

  • Commenters like invokestatic noted wonky layouts and crossing connections; a linting step would catch those before merging.
  • Encourages discussion on diagram best practices and integrates naturally with existing CI workflows.

MermaidAI – LLM‑Powered Diagram Assistant for Markdown

Summary

  • VS Code/Obsidian extension that lets users describe a diagram in plain English, sends the prompt to a local or hosted LLM, returns syntactically correct Mermaid code, and optionally triggers a layout‑optimized render.
  • Core value: accelerates diagram creation for developers and writers, enables AI‑driven editing of documentation while keeping files version‑control friendly.

Details

Key Value
Target Audience Developers, technical writers, AI‑augmented workflow enthusiasts
Core Feature Natural‑language‑to‑Mermaid conversion with live preview and one‑click insert/edit
Tech Stack TypeScript, VS Code Extension API, OpenAI / Anthropic API (or local LLM via llama.cpp), MermaidLayout renderer (from Idea 1) for preview
Difficulty Medium
Monetization Revenue-ready: Subscription tier ($5/mo) for premium LLM quota; free tier limited

Notes

  • Users like dbg31415 highlighted the potential for AI to edit and save diagrams in markdown; this directly satisfies that need.
  • Would generate lively discussion on AI‑assisted documentation and practical utility for knowledge‑base maintenance.

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