Picunic – convert image to Unicode art using ML

Hacker News

I built Picunic, a web-based port of a terminal image viewer that converts images to Unicode art using a CNN. *Demo:* https://mnur.me/picunic/ *GitHub:* https://github.com/mohammed-nurulhoque/picunic *How it works:* - Splits images into 8×16 pixel chunks (matching terminal cell aspect ratio) - Runs each chunk through a CNN encoder to get a 64-dim embedding - Finds the Unicode character with the most similar embedding (cosine similarity) - The CNN was trained on ~2000 Unicode characters rendered in DejaVu Sans Mono Everything runs client-side via WebAssembly - no server needed. Features include adjustable width, dithering for photos, and ASCII-only mode. Built with Rust (compiled to WASM), ONNX Runtime Web, and vanilla JavaScript. The original terminal version is also available in the repo. Currently works best for images with clear dark/light distinction. Would love feedback on the improving quality!

Visit product View on Hacker NewsDec 25, 2025

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56%56% predicted probability of success on Hacker News, based on ML models trained on real launch data.

nativeThis product was originally launched on this platform.

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