https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/ Updates on zombie-mermaid, and notes on what it's like maintaining it. https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/sharing-our-fixes-upstream-what-came-back.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/sharing-our-fixes-upstream-what-came-back.html Between 2026-08-29 and 2026-10-12 I commented on 68 beautiful-mermaid threads to say a fix exists in zombie-mermaid. Counts of what went out, the 19 threads that got a reply or reaction, the 49 that did not, and what I would do differently. Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/who-is-using-the-fork.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/who-is-using-the-fork.html 18 GitHub stars, about 2,600 npm downloads per package in 20 days, one public benchmark and one vendored copy. What those numbers show, what they do not, and why there is no telemetry. Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/workers-support-what-we-couldnt-fix.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/workers-support-what-we-couldnt-fix.html Upstream beautiful-mermaid#149 asks for rendering in Web Workers and Cloudflare Workers. We fixed the exact TypeError and reproduced the fix in a Workers-like Node setup, but we have not run a single diagram in workerd, and we cannot yet promise CPU time or startup limits. Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/a-star-chain-blowup-upstream-still-has.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/a-star-chain-blowup-upstream-still-has.html A plain 25-edge flowchart chain makes upstream beautiful-mermaid 1.1.3 spend about 19 seconds and then throw "Map maximum size exceeded". The same input renders in milliseconds here. We bisected it to a 12-line iteration cap that has been sitting in an open upstream PR since March. Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/ascii-fan-in-fan-out-parallel-labeled-edges.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/ascii-fan-in-fan-out-parallel-labeled-edges.html Several edges into one node, one node into several, or two edges between the same pair. Each used to collapse into a single stroke in the ASCII renderer. What changed, what the output looks like now, and what still isn't fixed. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/ascii-renderer-performance-what-we-measured.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/ascii-renderer-performance-what-we-measured.html Flowchart ASCII time in the weekly benchmark history climbed from 109 ms to 306 ms in two weeks. A run of perf PRs followed, and the history file stopped before any of them landed. Here is what each PR did, what its own description measured, and what a before/after run on one machine says. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/c4-architecture-beta-and-pie-charts.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/c4-architecture-beta-and-pie-charts.html C4, architecture-beta and pie charts now render to SVG and ASCII. Real output from the renderer for each, plus exactly where they differ from Mermaid and which one needs elkjs. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/cjk-emoji-ascii-box-borders-one-fix-four-upstream-issues.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/cjk-emoji-ascii-box-borders-one-fix-four-upstream-issues.html Four issues and a PR in beautiful-mermaid's tracker describe the same bug, ASCII boxes that undercount CJK and emoji labels. Here is what they have in common, how the fork fixed it, and what the upstream thread looks like now. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/er-diagram-pile-up.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/er-diagram-pile-up.html Between 2026-05-31 and 2026-06-22, four people reported ER diagram bugs to beautiful-mermaid. All four are still open upstream. Here is what each one was, what fixed it here, and what the fixes do not cover. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/matching-mermaid-subgraph-layout-oracle.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/matching-mermaid-subgraph-layout-oracle.html Flowcharts with subgraphs came out inverted compared with mermaid.js, and it took a script that scores layouts against the real thing to fix them and to see what still differs. The scorecard, the sample that scores 17 percent, and what the number can't tell you. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/package-sizes-2-2-6-to-5-0.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/package-sizes-2-2-6-to-5-0.html We re-measured every published zombie-mermaid package on npm, packed and unpacked, at 2.2.6 and 5.0.1. The total dropped about 18% packed and 20% unpacked, three packages got bigger, and two causes account for most of the savings. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/real-rl-and-cluster-routing-in-ascii-flowcharts.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/real-rl-and-cluster-routing-in-ascii-flowcharts.html graph RL used to print exactly like LR in the terminal, and edges leaving a subgraph punched straight through its border. Both are fixed now, with real renderer output showing what changed and what still looks rough. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/three-majors-in-13-days.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/three-majors-in-13-days.html zombie-mermaid shipped 3.0.0 on 2026-09-28, 4.0.0 on 2026-10-02 and 5.0.0 on 2026-10-10. What each major changed, taken from the release notes, and what the pace says about how this repo releases. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/upgrading-2x-to-5x.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/upgrading-2x-to-5x.html A short checklist for moving an app from 2.x to 5.x. Register elkjs in browsers, check your Node version, stop importing from src/, and prefer renderMermaidSVG. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/upstream-pr-to-fork-authorship-intact.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/upstream-pr-to-fork-authorship-intact.html Two fixes sat unreviewed on beautiful-mermaid for weeks. Here is how they landed in zombie-mermaid as cherry-picks that keep the original authors in git history, and what both authors said when told. Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/ascii-and-svg-renderer-now-standalone.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/ascii-and-svg-renderer-now-standalone.html @zombie-mermaid/ascii-renderer and @zombie-mermaid/svg-renderer are now documented, supported standalone packages on npm — install just the piece you need instead of the whole umbrella. Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/architecture-review-paid-for-itself.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/architecture-review-paid-for-itself.html An eight-item architecture review split four oversized React files and opened a CSS Modules seam with an explicit "no visual change" rule. Thirteen hours later, about twenty feature and fix PRs built a new diagram-discovery section on top of it, none of them touching the old monolith shape again. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/occupancy-guard-five-bugs-and-a-sixth.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/occupancy-guard-five-bugs-and-a-sixth.html A release-readiness audit found five confirmed ASCII rendering bugs, closed within hours by generalizing an old guard pattern from the ER renderer — until the same review turned up a sixth bug the guard couldn't fix, because the guard was never the problem. Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/why-i-forked-beautiful-mermaid.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/why-i-forked-beautiful-mermaid.html Why I forked a stalled beautiful-mermaid, a tour of what's been fixed and added since, and the process that keeps this fork actually maintained rather than just claiming to be. Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/why-v2-breaks-click-handlers.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/why-v2-breaks-click-handlers.html A deliberate, narrowly-scoped breaking change in v2.0.0 removed the inert data-click-callback DOM attribute in favor of a structured parseMermaid().interactions map — here's why it was worth a major version. Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/the-bugs-we-fixed-are-still-there.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/the-bugs-we-fixed-are-still-there.html A direct source-code check against beautiful-mermaid's current upstream tree, not a rendered-output comparison, confirms eleven fixed parsing and rendering bugs are unchanged four months on. Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/294-prs-14-days.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/294-prs-14-days.html The real daily merge-count histogram behind two weeks of reviving a dead fork — not the rounder number the tracking issue guessed — and what it does and doesn't tell you about agent-driven maintenance. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/accessibility-not-a-checkbox-ci-gate.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/accessibility-not-a-checkbox-ci-gate.html Nine accessibility issues, filed and fixed over four days, ended with a written conformance statement and an automated test that fails the build if a future diagram type ships without an accessible name. Here's the arc from bug report to guarantee, and the regression that got caught eight hours after the guarantee shipped. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/bug-audit-dead-fork.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/bug-audit-dead-fork.html On 2026-08-25, one evening of deliberate, format-by-format testing turned "upstream looks stalled" into fifteen numbered, reproducible rendering bugs. That list is the actual case for continuing the fork. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/coverage-gap-parallelizable-backlog.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/coverage-gap-parallelizable-backlog.html Instead of one "improve test coverage" ticket, this repo filed nineteen — one per file, all in a 25-second burst — and closed all nineteen in under four minutes each. The backlog shape did more work than any individual fix did. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/day-zero-of-the-toolchain.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/day-zero-of-the-toolchain.html Before a single Mermaid rendering bug got fixed in this fork, roughly twenty hours went into package managers, lint, coverage gates, and security scanning. Here's the verified timeline and the case for why that ordering wasn't optional. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/refactor-after-the-audit-not-before.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/refactor-after-the-audit-not-before.html On 2026-08-27 this repo extracted five shared seams out of code that had been drifting for two days — not because it looked messy, but because the same missing abstraction had already produced the same bug twice, and would go on to produce it twice more. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/shipping-v1-of-a-zombie.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/shipping-v1-of-a-zombie.html The unglamorous last mile between a patched fork and an npm-installable package — deploy target, attribution, branding, and the release itself — verified against the actual issues, PRs, and tags, not the plan. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/show-dont-tell-evidence-based-marketing.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/show-dont-tell-evidence-based-marketing.html A demo page that renders real before/after diffs became a build-time guarantee, then a habit, then a hard requirement about what counts as proof. The four issues that got it there, verified against their own PRs. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/terminal-rendering-secretly-about-unicode.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/terminal-rendering-secretly-about-unicode.html The hardest recurring bug in zombie-mermaid's ASCII renderer wasn't diagram layout, it was column-width math, and it came back four times in a week wearing a different costume each time. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/the-judge-that-never-sleeps.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/the-judge-that-never-sleeps.html A weekly job has an LLM compare this repo's ASCII rendering against real mermaid.js and files issues for what doesn't match. A second bot turns PR review comments into tracked issues. Neither fixes anything — that part is still humans. Sun, 06 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/for-mermaid-ascii-users.html https://dfadler.github.io/zombie-mermaid/blog/for-mermaid-ascii-users.html A same-input comparison against mermaid-ascii 1.5.0 — where the two renderers match character for character, where they diverge, and what each does better. Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT