ASCII Automata
ASCII AUTOMATA is a tool to analyze the visual connectivity of characters in textmode fonts. It works by scoring edge connectivity of each piece and finding the best matching neighbour piece. Every time it places a piece, it "grows" towards the edges it touches by placing a matching piece. The red heatmap shows how frequently each character is used, useful for analyzing the fonts. I initially made it as a tool for myself. When I design textmode art fonts it is sometimes difficult to figure out if a specific character would actually be useful for drawing or not. I wanted a tool which would…
ASCII Automata launched on October 17, 2025 with 103 votes, #301 of 8,178 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
ASCII Automata analyzes how well characters in textmode fonts connect visually to each other. The tool scores edge connectivity and automatically grows patterns by placing matching pieces next to each other, creating emergent designs. A red heatmap displays which characters are used most frequently, helping font designers determine if specific characters are practical for drawing. Originally built as a personal tool, it reveals both font versatility and produces unexpectedly beautiful patterns.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
ASCII AUTOMATA is a tool to analyze the visual connectivity of characters in textmode fonts. It works by scoring edge connectivity of each piece and finding the best matching neighbour piece. Every time it places a piece, it "grows" towards the edges it touches by placing a matching piece. The red heatmap shows how…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →- MAMermaid ASCII Diagrams2024 · mermaid-ascii.art · ▲234
- TMTypograms, Markdown-like renderer for ASCII diagrams2022 · code.sgo.to · ▲140
- IMI made a collaborative ASCII editor2021 · ▲53
I made a website for drawing ascii art with other people https://ascii-collab.app/ It's been online for a little over a year so there's a fair bit of stuff to browse if you want to look around (so much that I even made a poster https://ascii-collab.app/poster.png) There are other websites like yourworldoftext that do this but ascii-collab has some extra features like per-user undo/redo, box selection, a color highlight mode to see who made particular changes, and there's admin tools so I can remove spam. The code is open sourced here…
MoebiusXBIN – ASCII and text-mode art editor with custom font support2025 · blog.glyphdrawing.club · ▲55Create your own textmode graphics & unusual ASCII art
- CPChoose Photo. Make Ascii2012 · dchang.mit.edu · ▲116
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