Markdown and Mermaid Writing
Overview
This skill teaches you — and enforces a standard for — creating scientific documentation using markdown with embedded Mermaid diagrams as the default and canonical format.
The core bet: a relationship expressed as a Mermaid diagram inside a .md file is more
valuable than any image. It is text, so it diffs cleanly in git. It requires no build step.
It renders natively on GitHub, GitLab, Notion, VS Code, and any markdown viewer. It uses
fewer tokens than a prose description of the same relationship. And it can always be
converted to a polished image later — but the text version remains the source of truth.
"The more you get your reports and files in .md in just regular text, which mermaid is as well as being a simple 'script language'. This just helps with any downstream rendering and especially AI generated images (using mermaid instead of just long form text to describe relationships < tokens). Additionally mermaid can render along with markdown for easy use almost anywhere by humans or AI."
— Clayton Young (@borealBytes), K-Dense Discord, 2026-02-19
When to Use This Skill
Use this skill when:
- Creating **any…