ASCII MagicDocs

Documentation

ASCII Magic turns an image or a video into ASCII art, halftone, LEGO, voxel and 87 other looks, in the browser or straight from an AI agent.

A studio photograph of a person in profile against a grey background
Source
The same photograph redrawn as a grid of amber LED dots on a yellow field
Rendered
LED Matrix, one of the 91 render modes, at its shipped defaults. Nothing was uploaded to draw this: the source is read off your disk into a canvas and the render happens in the tab.
QuickstartOne image to one export, in about two minutes. MCP serverUse ASCII Magic from Claude, Cursor or any MCP client. Core conceptsStyle, variant, post effect, recipe, credit.

What the tool actually is

A browser-based render engine. Your image never leaves the tab: it is loaded through URL.createObjectURL and drawn to a canvas, so there is no upload step and no server round trip for a normal render. The only thing that goes to a server is a generative render, which needs a model.

Everything is live. Changing a style, a slider or a post effect repaints immediately, and an export is the same render at a higher scale.

SourceStylePost effectsExportimage or video1 of 91 modesup to 28, fixed ordersame render, largerall of it on your own machine, in the tabparams repaint liveparams repaint live
The whole path an image takes. A generative render is the one exception: it is the only step that calls a server, because it calls a model.

Where to go next

Styles91 render modes, what each parameter does, and which 15 are free. Post effects28 effects, their defaults, and the fixed order they stack in. Recipe formatThe wire format, decoded well enough to parse by hand. Limits and errorsFile caps, resolution ceilings, rate limits, every error string.

Three ways to use it

RouteGood forNeeds
The editorMaking one thing and looking at it while you make it. Everything repaints live.Nothing. It works signed out.
The MCP serverAn agent doing it for you, in a loop, over many images.An account, and a client that speaks MCP.
A linkHanding someone a complete look without handing them a file.Nothing.

What it is not

Saying this early saves a wasted evening:

  • Not a text-art generator. The output is an image of characters, not characters. There is no plain-text and no SVG export, so you cannot paste the result into a terminal.
  • Not a photo editor. Brightness and contrast exist to feed the tone-to-glyph mapping, not to retouch. Levels and Curves grade the render, not the source.
  • Not a batch tool in the browser. One source at a time. Batch work is what the MCP server is for.
  • Not an upload service. There is no library of your files on a server, because your files never reach one.

The numbers, current as of this build

Count
Style tiles in the browser101
Distinct render modes91
Free render modes15
Post effects28 (16 free, 12 Pro)
Generative presets171 across 10 groups
Dither palettes and algorithms15 and 15
Character ramps17

These are read out of the engine source when this page is built, not typed in, so they cannot drift from the app.

How these docs are organised

SectionAnswers
Get startedWhat this is, how to make one thing, and what the words mean. Read in order if you have never opened the tool.
The editorOne page per region of the interface and per stage of the pipeline. Read the one you are stuck on.
MCP serverConnecting an agent, and the exact shape of every tool call.
ReferenceThe wire formats and the hard numbers. Not meant to be read through.

Every count on these pages is read out of the engine source when the site is built, so a page cannot quote a number the app no longer has. Where a behaviour is a known bug rather than a design decision, it is marked as one rather than described as intended.

Last updated