Skip to main content
Monogrid ensures every line in a Unicode box drawing has the same visual width — accounting for CJK characters (2 columns), emoji (2 columns), combining marks (0 width), and ASCII (1 column). The width tables are Q.E.D verified across xterm.js, Alacritty, and Ghostty.

​
Quick Start

Monogrid is a single binary (2.2 MB) with no runtime dependencies.

​
Installation

Included with the Monolex app, or install via:
Monogrid is part of the mono- CLI family:

​
Commands

​
check — Inspect Without Modifying

Implicit check: monogrid file.md works without the check keyword. Exit code 0 if no issues, 1 if issues found.

​
fix — Auto-Fix with Loop

Repeats check-fix cycles until 0 issues or max iterations reached.
This command modifies files in place.

​
qed — Q.E.D Deep Verification

Character-by-character width analysis. For each box:
  • Calculates visual width of every line
  • Lists every non-ASCII character with its Unicode codepoint and width
  • Groups by category (COMBINING, BMP_WIDE, HIGH_WIDE, DEFAULT)
  • Verifies recalculated width matches expected
Only meaningful after all issues are fixed.

​
structure — Structural Analysis

Detects inner boxes that overflow outer box boundaries. Shows left/right margins for each nested box. Cannot be auto-fixed — requires manual redesign.

​
report — Compact File Survey

One-line-per-file summary sorted by issue count. Useful for surveying large documentation sets before batch fixing.

​
Workflow

​
What It Checks

Monogrid enforces 9 alignment rules: Rules 1 and 6 are auto-fixable. All other rules require manual correction because they need semantic understanding of the diagram.

​
Width Rules

CodexMono renders characters at these widths:
Common mistake: ⚠ (U+26A0) is width 1, not 2. But ⚡ (U+26A1) is width 2. These are only 1 codepoint apart but have different widths. Monogrid’s tables handle this correctly.

​
Self-Verification

Monogrid’s own --help output passes monogrid check with 0 issues:

​
Origin

Monogrid is an exact port of check-boxes.py v5.7 (Python, 1,984 lines) to Rust (2,719 lines). The Unicode width tables were verified through ASURA 3-Phase Research across three terminal emulators. Both versions produce identical results on all test files.