charmascii is a command-line application that converts ordinary text into decorative ASCII art. It uses FIGlet fonts to transform words and phrases into large, stylised characters suitable for terminal banners, documentation, command-line interfaces and other text-based presentations.
The application provides a collection of font styles, decorative borders and colour effects. Users can customise the appearance of their text and produce anything from simple monochrome headings to colourful banners with gradients and framing.
charmascii can display its output directly in a terminal or generate files for use elsewhere. It is also available as a Go library, allowing developers to incorporate its rendering capabilities into their own applications.
The software includes an interface based on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling compatible AI agents and other tools to request ASCII art generation programmatically.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Generate decorative ASCII art from ordinary text.
- Provides 10 FIGlet fonts, including Standard, Doom, Slant, Banner, Big, Block and Shadow.
- Supports Unicode borders with single, double, rounded and bold line styles, plus plain ASCII borders.
- Apply ANSI colours to text and borders.
- Create two-colour gradients for more elaborate text effects.
- Supports left, centre and right text alignment.
- Customise internal padding and maximum output width.
- Generate output in terminal, plain text, PNG, SVG and JSON formats.
- Configure background colours for PNG and SVG images.
- Automatically detects terminal output and removes ANSI escape sequences when writing to pipes.
- Provides structured JSON responses containing plain text, styled output and rendering metadata.
- Includes an MCP server exposing ASCII art generation to compatible applications.
- Offers a Go library API for integrating text rendering into other programs.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/emmanuelgautier/charmascii
Support:
Developer: Emmanuel Gautier
License: MIT License
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|---|---|
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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