AI tool comparison
ds2api vs Pretty Fish
Which one should you ship with? Here is the side-by-side panel verdict, pricing read, reviewer split, and community vote comparison.
Developer Tools
ds2api
DeepSeek web sessions as drop-in OpenAI/Claude/Gemini APIs
50%
Panel ship
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Community
Paid
Entry
ds2api is a Go middleware that wraps DeepSeek's web chat interface and re-exposes it as fully compatible OpenAI, Claude, and Gemini API endpoints. Developers can point any existing SDK or tool that speaks these protocols at a local ds2api instance and get DeepSeek responses without rewriting a line of integration code. It handles multi-account pooling, per-account rate limiting, proof-of-work computation (which DeepSeek's web layer requires), and context management for long conversations. The architecture is surprisingly complete for a solo project: a Go backend for concurrency and protocol translation, a React management dashboard, Docker/Vercel deployment support, and compiled binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It even adapts tool-calling semantics across different provider formats — a notoriously tricky edge case. The project has attracted nearly 3,000 GitHub stars and 461 in a single day, suggesting real demand for free or cheap DeepSeek access routed through familiar APIs. The catch: DeepSeek's ToS doesn't allow automated web scraping, and the README explicitly limits use to "learning and internal verification." That said, the technical execution is impressive and the architecture is worth studying regardless.
Developer Tools
Pretty Fish
Free, beautiful Mermaid diagram editor that works offline
75%
Panel ship
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Community
Free
Entry
Pretty Fish is a free, open-source Mermaid diagram editor with live preview, 5 built-in themes, multi-page workspaces, and one-click SVG/PNG export. It works offline as a Progressive Web App (PWA) and requires no account, no login, and no installation. It supports all 14+ Mermaid diagram types including flowcharts, sequence diagrams, Gantt charts, entity-relationship diagrams, and Git graphs. The editor includes syntax highlighting, auto-completion, instant error feedback, and a clean split-pane layout. The multi-page workspace lets you manage entire diagram projects in a single session. Export quality is excellent — SVG output is clean and scaling-ready for use in presentations, docs, or design systems. Pretty Fish hit Hacker News front page today with 128 points and has the makings of the go-to Mermaid editor for developers who generate diagrams from AI-assisted documentation workflows. With LLMs increasingly generating Mermaid syntax in their outputs, having a polished renderer and editor matters more than ever.
Reviewer scorecard
“If you have a DeepSeek account and want to use it through your existing OpenAI-compatible stack, this is the cleanest solution I've seen. The multi-account pooling and automatic rate-limit handling are genuinely thoughtful engineering.”
“The official Mermaid live editor is clunky and slow. Pretty Fish loads instantly, works offline, and the multi-page workspace means I can manage all my architecture diagrams in one place. Bookmarking this immediately as my default Mermaid editor.”
“This is web scraping dressed up as an API — and DeepSeek's ToS explicitly forbids it. You're one UI update away from your middleware breaking entirely. For production use, just pay for the official API; it's already cheap.”
“It's a genuinely nice editor but it's solving a niche problem — most devs who need Mermaid diagrams already use VS Code extensions or embed them in Notion. And with no backend, there's no collaboration or sharing story, which limits its use in team workflows.”
“This pattern — wrapping web interfaces as protocol-compatible APIs — is going to proliferate as AI providers fragment. ds2api is an early proof-of-concept for a class of tools that lets developers treat the web as an API surface.”
“As AI tools increasingly output Mermaid syntax to explain architectures and flows, the need for a great rendering environment grows. Pretty Fish positions itself at the intersection of AI-generated diagrams and human editing — that's a well-timed niche.”
“As someone who builds content pipelines, the ToS uncertainty makes this a hard pass for anything customer-facing. The Go architecture is slick but the legal exposure isn't worth it for a production tool.”
“Five beautiful themes and clean SVG exports mean I can finally use Mermaid diagrams in client-facing presentations without them looking like developer scratch notes. This is the Mermaid editor I've always wanted and the zero-friction setup seals it.”
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