Anytime I try mermaid for anything more complex than a toy diagram I always end up absolutely frustrated by the arcane and topologically poor layout that is produced.

Styling seems like a trivial problem by comparison.

Is pele open source?

I tried to find the source code of it but I was unable in finding so

Edit: found it, https://github.com/obsidianmd/pele

Also folks, this is a good reminder to please have a github icon on the top of the page to easily show git/github links if the app is open source, also helps in the fact that I can star your projects and bookmark them more easily :-D

Does the official Mermaid library still require a full or headless browser environment in order to lay out the SVG? If so, Pele is great news for embedding Mermaid rendering in other places.

Just FYI, "pele" is "mouse" in Latvian. :)