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Artscii

MCP tools for searching and generating ASCII art, kaomoji, banners, charts, diagrams, animations, and image conversions.

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Install Artscii

Pick your client, then add it in one click or paste the config.

STDIONode.js
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "artscii": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "artscii"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Settings → Developer → Edit Config, merge this into mcpServers, then fully quit and reopen Claude Desktop.

Install not yet sandbox-tested— we haven't run this command through our automated sandbox yet. Not a red flag; we're working through the catalog.

Overview

The artscii MCP server gives AI agents tools for searching ASCII art and kaomoji, generating terminal visuals, and converting images into ASCII or braille output. It runs as an npm-based MCP process and exposes 11 focused tools, including banners, frames, charts, animations, procedural characters, compositions, and diagrams. Reach for it when an agent needs terminal-friendly visuals, status displays, text decorations, lightweight data views, or structured ASCII diagrams.

Use cases

  • Search for kaomoji by emotion
  • Render terminal banners and framed messages
  • Generate progress bars, sparklines, and heatmaps
  • Create seeded ASCII characters and animations
  • Convert images into ASCII or braille

Key features

  • ASCII art and kaomoji search
  • FIGlet banners and styled text frames
  • Progress, sparkline, and heatmap charts
  • Terminal animation scripts or raw frames
  • Seeded procedural ASCII characters
  • ASCII diagrams and image conversion

Tools11

What Artscii lets your agent do. Expand a tool for its parameters.

Self-reported~122 tokens of context

Security & health

What it can reach and how reliably it runs — from our own checks, not the maintainer’s claims.

ActiveLast checked Today

Recent health check succeeded.

4/4 checks healthy over the last 39d

Supply-chain signal

No high-severity advisories surfaced by our automated scan.

Critical 0High 0Medium 0Low 0

Scanned 10d ago via OSV.dev · artscii (npm)

Adoption & maintenance

Factual signals from GitHub, npm, and our automated checks — not a rating.

GitHub stars1Stargazers on the source repository.
Last commit6mo agoMost recent push to the default branch.
Tools exposed11Callable tools this server registers over MCP.

How Artscii works

What the artscii MCP server does

The artscii MCP server supplies AI agents with text-based visual output rather than connecting to a remote art or data platform. Its collection includes searchable ASCII art and kaomoji, while its generators produce banners, framed text, charts, animations, diagrams, and procedural characters. The server also accepts images by URL or base64 data and renders them as ASCII characters or Unicode braille.

The package is suited to terminal interfaces, chat responses, command-line status output, documentation, and other contexts where plain text is more useful than a bitmap.

How it works

MCP clients start the package as a local process through npx -y artscii. An agent then calls individual tools with parameters such as text, art identifiers, chart data, diagram structures, or image input. Search can list available art and kaomoji when no query is supplied; get retrieves art by ID, while kaomoji can select entries by emotion or return a random result.

Generated output stays in text form. The animation tool combines art or custom text with one of 12 motions and can return either a shell playback script or raw frames. Procedural characters are deterministic for a given seed, with optional species, facial features, accessories, mood, and size settings. This makes the same seed useful when an agent needs repeatable output.

Setup and configuration

Install the artscii MCP server through the npm command used by the client. Claude Code can register it with claude mcp add artscii -- npx -y artscii. Claude Desktop and Cursor use an MCP server entry with command set to npx and arguments -y and artscii. VS Code can install it through the MCP extension search or define the same command in settings.json.

No required environment variables or external service credentials are documented. Image conversion accepts either a URL or base64 input through the convert tool.

Tools and capabilities

The artscii MCP server exposes these tools:

  • search: Find art and kaomoji, with optional query and filtering parameters.
  • get: Retrieve an art entry by ID.
  • kaomoji: Select kaomoji by emotion or category, or return one randomly.
  • banner: Render large text with five FIGlet font choices.
  • frame: Put text inside one of five border styles, with padding, alignment, and an optional title.
  • chart: Render progress bars, sparklines, or heatmaps.
  • animate: Pair art or text with motion and return a script or animation frames.
  • character: Create a seeded ASCII character with configurable appearance options.
  • compose: Arrange text blocks horizontally or vertically.
  • convert: Turn an image into classic ASCII or braille output with sizing and image adjustments.
  • diagram: Produce flowcharts, trees, tables, timelines, class diagrams, Gantt charts, and other documented diagram types.

Limitations and notes

Output is designed for text environments, so rendering depends on the client and terminal's support for Unicode characters. Braille, box-drawing borders, and some diagram styles may not display consistently in every environment. Image conversion requires an image URL or base64 input supplied to the tool.

The repository documents an MIT license for the package. It also identifies the included art icons as originating from game-icons.net under CC BY 3.0, and the kaomoji source as MIT-licensed.

Read the full README View source on GitHub

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Frequently Asked Questions about Artscii

artscii is an MCP server that connects AI agents to a local collection of ASCII art and kaomoji. It also exposes tools for banners, framing, charts, animations, procedural characters, composition, image-to-ASCII conversion, and diagrams. Main tools are search, get, kaomoji, banner, frame, chart, animate, character, compose, convert, and diagram.

Install it by running it through npx with `npx -y artscii` in your MCP client configuration. Claude Code supports `claude mcp add artscii -- npx -y artscii`; Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code can define the same command and arguments in their MCP settings.

Yes, artscii works with Cursor through a `.cursor/mcp.json` entry. Configure the server with `command` set to `npx` and arguments `-y` and `artscii`, then use the exposed MCP tools from Cursor.

Yes, the `convert` tool turns an image supplied by URL or base64 data into ASCII art. It supports `ascii` and `braille` modes, along with options including size, inversion, contrast, gamma, and braille threshold.

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