Pele open-source library released by Obsidian developer

Kepano, the CEO of Dynalist and developer of Obsidian, has released Pele, a lightweight open-source library designed to render Mermaid diagrams as SVG. The library is released under the MIT license and aims to provide a faster, smaller, and more themeable alternative to Mermaid.js.

Pele is reported to be 100 to 500 times faster than Mermaid.js with a bundle size approximately six times smaller. It features no dependencies and supports CSS variable-based theming, allowing diagrams to adapt to dark or light modes and responsive layouts. The developer noted that the creation of Pele was motivated by concerns regarding performance, security, and the difficulty of theming within the existing Mermaid.js framework.

Pele is slated to become the new diagram renderer in upcoming versions of Obsidian, though it is currently available for general use.