ASCII Kit

Text diagrams for PRs, Slack, Linear and docs: hierarchy, structure, flows and options, without screenshots. Write it as plain text, select it, press a hotkey, pick a format from a live preview.

40 formats in 9 kinds · 234 glyphs in 19 groups · 38 templates in 5 sections

Commands

Command	What it does
Compose Diagram	Turns selected text into trees, boxes, tables, flows, sequence diagrams, charts, plans, code callouts and styled text, each format with a live preview
Search Glyphs	Box-drawing, arrows, markers, blocks, keys and more, searchable by meaning, with animated spinners
Diagram Templates	Ready-made skeletons: wireframe, panels, git graph, Gantt, kanban, code callouts…

An indented list becomes a tree. Text after two spaces lines up as a note.

Page                   Page
  Header  sticky       ├── Header            sticky
    Logo               │   ├── Logo
    Account menu   →   │   ╰── Account menu
  Results  paged       ╰── Results           paged
    Result card            ├── Result card
    Pagination             ╰── Pagination

A -> B: label lines become a sequence diagram.

Browser -> API: POST /search       Browser               API                Index
API -> Index: query                   │                   │                   │
Index --> API: hits                   │─ POST /search ───►│                   │
API --> Browser: 200 results   →      │                   │─ query ──────────►│
                                      │                   │◄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄ hits ┄│
                                      │◄┄┄┄┄ 200 results ┄│                   │
                                      │                   │                   │

label value rows become a chart.

Design 40       Design  ████████████████████████████████████████ 40
Build 29    →   Build   █████████████████████████████            29
QA 12.5         QA      ████████████▌                            12.5
Launch 3        Launch  ███                                      3

Compose Diagram

Compose reads the selected text. Without a selection it falls back to the clipboard, and with neither it opens a text box you can type into.

The detected format is listed first under Suggested. Formats that can't draw the input sink to the bottom with a note saying why.

Kind	Write this	Formats
Tree	an indented or bulleted list (tabs or spaces), or an existing tree to restyle	light; rounded; heavy; plain ASCII; top-down (org chart); nested boxes
Box	any text; a line of --- becomes a divider	light; rounded; heavy; double; titled; titled, rounded; titled, heavy
Table	rows separated by tabs (from a spreadsheet), pipes, 2+ spaces or commas; first row is the header	box; rounded; plain; markdown; kanban board
Flow	A > B > C (also ->, →, =>), or one step per line	inline arrows; boxes across; boxes down; boxes down, heavy arrows
Sequence	one message per line: A -> B: label, B --> A: reply for a dashed return	lanes
Chart	label value rows (tab, colon or spaces before the number; $, % and 1,200 are fine), or one line of numbers	bars; columns; line; sparkline
Plan	task start length or task 2-4 rows for a Gantt chart (a first line like Sprint names the unit); date: label rows for a timeline	Gantt; timeline across; timeline down
Code	code lines, then target: note lines whose target appears in the code (wrap it in backticks if it contains a colon)	callouts
Text	any text: the styles work letter by letter; the banner has A–Z, 0–9 and basic punctuation	bold; italic; bold italic; monospace; strikethrough; underline; banner, small caps; banner, tall caps; banner, tall, mixed case

Key	Action
↵	Paste (replaces the selection)
⌘↵	Copy
⌘⇧C	Copy wrapped in ``` (what Slack and GitHub need)
⌘⇧V	Paste wrapped in ```
⌘E	Edit the input and preview again

The preview pane flags glyphs that may render as emoji, and diagrams wider than 72 columns. Raycast's preview pane wraps at about 56 columns, so a wider diagram looks broken there but still pastes correctly.

Search Glyphs and Diagram Templates

Each glyph's detail pane shows its width and code points, and warns when a glyph depends on the font or has an emoji form. ↵ pastes, ⌘↵ copies, and ⌘⇧C copies a multi-line glyph or a template as a code block. Spinners animate while selected: ↵ pastes the first frame, ⌘↵ copies them all.

Setup

• Hotkeys: Raycast Settings → Extensions → ASCII Kit. For example ⌃⌥A for Compose Diagram, ⌃⌥G for Search Glyphs and ⌃⌥T for Diagram Templates.
• Accessibility: reading the selected text needs Raycast to have Accessibility permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility). Raycast usually has it already.

Where it renders

Alignment only holds in a monospace font, so paste diagrams into a code block: ⌘⇧C does that for Slack, GitHub, Linear and Notion. Inline glyphs (→ ✓ · ↳) work anywhere. Email and Google Docs use proportional fonts, so diagrams don't line up there.

More

The source repo has a gallery of every format, glyph and template, recipes, and a snippet pack for typing the most common glyphs inline (!tee → ├── ), which you import with Raycast → Import Snippets.