NodebookMD v0.2.1

Features

• Open in app: a nodebookmd://docs/<page> link opens that page in the app, on Windows and Linux. The app registers the link at launch. A link opens the page in the window that is already open, and also shows a window hidden in the tray. On nodebook.md, a page shows an Open in app button; after one click, later visits open the app directly.
• A link to a page that the Houdini build does not have shows "Broken link" in its tooltip. The SideFX docs contain such links, for example the Mirror tool link on "Mirror geometry across a symmetry plane". The tooltip showed nothing before.

Fixes

• In Houdini's help pane, a link to a missing page shows the not-found page with Go back. It showed a bare error line before.

NodebookMD v0.2.0

Features

• HoudiniMD is now NodebookMD, with a new notebook icon. The update keeps everything: bookmarks, history, settings and F1 in Houdini. It removes the old HoudiniMD install, and moves your Start menu and desktop shortcuts to NodebookMD. A taskbar pin of HoudiniMD goes away: pin NodebookMD again. The site moves to nodebook.md; every houdinimd.com address sends you to the same page there.
• A theme switch made in one window now applies to the other windows of the app.
• Each section's overview page is now in the sidebar, as the first row of its folder: "Fluids" at the top of Fluids, "Geometry nodes" at the top of Geometry — SOP, "Nodes" at the top of Nodes. Search and links could open these pages before, but the sidebar never listed them.
• A tutorial page that loads an example, such as "Animated pressure constraints", now shows a Launch in Houdini button where the page says to press Load. It showed a bold "Load_example" line before.
• Ctrl Alt T keeps the window on top of other windows, the same as the pin button in the title bar.

Fixes

• A search excerpt that opens another page no longer shows "This page has no section named …". The page did scroll to the section.
• A page opened from the search field on the home page now shows in the Recent list of the search.
• The version switcher opens over the sidebar's folder headers, not under them.
• A page opened from a link now scrolls its sidebar row clear of the folder headers at the top of the sidebar.
• A code card with a long signature no longer keeps a blank strip on its right for a scrollbar.
• The Settings tooltip shows its shortcut, Ctrl ,.
• The installer no longer puts a developer tool, probe.exe, next to the app.
• Copy link, Share and "Open on sidefx.com" now give the page's sidefx.com address. They gave an address on the old site, which is closed.
• A zoomed picture in the lightbox stays below the title bar.
• Every line icon has the same stroke weight.
• On a narrow page, the title sits close under breadcrumbs that wrap.
• The sidebar left out every index page (122 on Houdini 21.0.829). Every page of the build now has a row.
• Nodes no longer shows an empty "Index" branch, and Learn no longer shows an empty "SideFX Labs" branch.
• A folder no longer opens onto a second folder with the same name, as "Object-level characters", "Karma User Guide" and "Python panel examples" did.
• The index builds again once, on the first start.
• The Linux AppImage runs inside a sandbox again: every program in it now has its execute bit (265cd8d).

HoudiniMD v0.1.0-beta.7

Features

• "Send to Obsidian" can bring a page's pictures with it. A page with no pictures goes through Obsidian's own link, as before. A page with pictures asks first: bring the pictures, or send the text only. Bringing them writes the note under HoudiniMD/ and its pictures under HoudiniMD/attachments/, in a vault picked from Obsidian's own vault list or from a folder. The answer can be kept, and changed in Settings.
• The setup event now separates a machine with no agent to connect from a reader who had one and said no, and names the agents the scan found.
• The app version moved to the right of the title bar, beside the window buttons. The back and forward arrows now sit next to the name.
• Settings, in a window over the page. Open it from the cog at the bottom of the panel, or from the menu on the app's name. It turns F1 on or off for each Houdini release that is installed, connects Houdini MCP to an agent and says when an agent already runs it (or runs another Houdini MCP), sets what Send to Obsidian does with pictures, and holds the usage-data switch.
• Press a picture to open it large over the window. Click or use the wheel to zoom, drag to move around, and use the arrow keys to walk through every picture on the page. Escape closes it.
• A page with pictures has a paper-clip button in its header, with the count. Press it to walk the pictures in the lightbox.
• In a tight window, Copy as Markdown shows only its icon, so the page title keeps its width.
• Search finds a thing on a page you name: "dop network time scale" opens DOP Network at Scale Time, "box size" puts Box first.
• Right-click opens the app's own menu: copy (the selection, or else the page as Markdown), copy the link, open the page on sidefx.com, save it, open or copy a link, open a picture. Each item has a letter key, drawn underlined. A right-click on the page's own name in the breadcrumbs gives "Reveal in sidebar".
• Search shorthands: type vex:, sop:, vop:, e: (and more) to search one part of the docs. The shorthand shows as a small card in the field. A shorthand alone lists that part of the docs. h: searches the pages you have read.
• A pin in the title bar keeps the window on top of other windows. Press it again to let go.
• An example page has a Launch in Houdini button: it starts a new Houdini with that example. A button beside Launch in Houdini links to the node the example is for.
• The example index pages list their examples, and an example link shows its name and what it shows in the tooltip.
• Every icon button names itself in the app's tooltip, with its keys where it has some.
• A bookmark for a page with no icon shows two letters of its name.
• Every menu is one component: the right-click menu and the Copy as Markdown drop-down look, read and take keys the same way. The right-click menu now has Send to Obsidian, and a link has "Open in new window" (Ctrl+Click). Copy page link shows its keys, Ctrl L.
• Ctrl , opens Settings. The Settings sidebar uses the rows of the doc sidebar; the icon of the open section is in the brand colour. The Settings title, the section title and the close cross sit on one line.
• Every modal blurs and dims the page behind it the same way. On a machine that draws without a GPU, the blur is off and the dim stays: measured, a software blur added about 55 ms to each key press in search; on a GPU it costs nothing.
• The Obsidian question: new text, "Remember my choice", and Send has the focus, so Enter sends.
• A picture as wide as the text reaches into the margins, as a video does.
• The page header buttons share one height and padding.
• The tooltip comes at once (60 ms), and draws keys as keys. The app's name in the title bar says what it does.

Fixes

• Ctrl with +, - or 0 now zooms the page. The command the zoom keys use was not in the app's permitted list, so every press did nothing.
• A shutdown that Windows starts — a session end, or the update installer asking the app to close — no longer ends in a crash message. The window is already gone at that point, so the app now closes quietly.
• The back arrow now turns off at the start of the trail. A click in the table of contents used to wipe the page's place in the history, so the arrows lost count after it.
• The table of contents now marks the section you are in. After a jump it used to mark a section far from the one on screen, and a section near the end could never be marked.
• A row in the table of contents no longer grows when it turns bold, so the list does not shift.
• Going back no longer makes the sidebar icons blink. The window fetched every icon again when a row came back; it now keeps the icons it has already drawn.
• An empty bookmark list now says how to keep a page: press Ctrl D, or the bookmark button. The keys are drawn as keys.
• A picture keeps its own size, in the text and in a table: it is never drawn larger than its file. A drawing fills the column. Narrow pictures sit at the center. A clear picture gets a white or black ground that fits its marks, in both themes and in the lightbox.
• A code panel that scrolls sideways no longer adds a strip under the code for its scrollbar.
• The sidebar opens narrower (260 px). Drag its edge to change it; a double-click on the edge puts it back.
• Search excerpts from a table show the cells, not the table's markdown.
• A bookmark in the sidebar shows the page's name and summary in the app's tooltip, at once, not the slow system tooltip.
• F1 lists only the Houdini releases that are installed. A release that left only its preferences folder no longer shows.
• Toggling the sidebar no longer flashes the table of contents pill.
• Hovering some bookmarks (Convert, Remesh to Grid) crashed the window. The tooltip measured its own width on each draw and moved by a fraction of a pixel, forever. It now moves by whole pixels only.
• 1,343 parameters written in the help as "take the text of that other parameter" (#contentfrom) were empty. Pyro Solver's Number of Sources, Operation and Source Rank are among them. They now carry that text. The index builds again once, on the first start.
• The Box page said "For more information, see Box handles" twice.
• Send to Obsidian with pictures now opens the note in Obsidian and brings it to the front.
• A note sent to Obsidian now shows every picture. Pictures in columns, in a row, in a table cell, and videos came through as raw text, because Obsidian reads no Markdown inside HTML. They are now plain embeds, and a Vimeo video is a link.
• The paper-clip button opens the lightbox from the button, not from the first picture.
• The title bar goes dark under the lightbox, as it does under every other window over the page.
• The sidebar button sits the same distance from the top and the left of the window. The pin is smaller, in line with the other title bar icons.
• The title bar pin and the panel's footer icons draw sharp lines. The footer groups Settings and the theme on the left, the bug report on the right.

HoudiniMD v0.1.0-beta.6

Fixes

• "Send to Obsidian" no longer fails silently. The app is now allowed to open obsidian:// links; it was blocked by the opener plugin's default scope, which only covers http, https, mailto and tel.

HoudiniMD v0.1.0-beta.5

Features

• Linux build now ships as a single AppImage, built on Ubuntu 22.04 and widened to glibc 2.34, so it runs on RHEL 9, Rocky 9, AlmaLinux 9, Ubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 24.04. The web process dies in EGL on Ubuntu 26.04. Install and build instructions are in the README.
• Mouse scroll-wheel, Ctrl+Plus, Ctrl+Minus, and Ctrl+0 now zoom the app window.
• Indexing now starts when the Houdini build is selected during onboarding.
• Right-click "Save as" and Ctrl+S now save the page, the same as the "Copy as Markdown" menu. The file dialog offers Markdown, HTML and text, and the extension picks the form.
• Pages can now be saved as a single HTML file. The file holds the app's own styling, fonts and pictures, so it opens with no network and no app.
• Markdown menu now has "Send to Obsidian". It copies the page and opens a new note in the vault last used.
• App now creates local logs in logs/ beside the index. Logs cover standard flows and errors, are not sent via telemetry, and are deleted on uninstall. The title bar also gets an "Open logs" button.

Fixes

• Save dialog now opens in front of the window instead of behind it.
• Right-click "Save as" no longer opens two dialogs.
• New installs now populate the page count, sidebar counts, and documentation tree automatically when indexing completes.
• Build card now updates to show the selected Houdini build and its page count.
• Indexes awaiting install counting now show "indexing…" instead of "0% indexed".
• Table of contents no longer keeps the list of the page before it. A page with fewer than two headings kept the last page's list, and the lists piled up one page at a time.

HoudiniMD v0.1.0-beta.4

Features

• The version card shows the first index as it runs: "11,296 pages · 12% indexed", then "11,296 pages" when it is done. The progress box at the bottom right is gone.
• The sidebar fills while the docs are indexed. Nodes, Languages, Learn and Reference are always shown, and their page counts climb.
• In the version picker, a build with no index says "Click to index".
• Each build in the version picker has an F1 mark. An orange mark means F1 in that Houdini opens HoudiniMD. Click it to set or remove HoudiniMD as the help server for that version.

Fixes

• Performance gains: the first index of a Houdini build is 6× faster, 13 s down to 2 s.
• A switch to a build with no index clears the old page counts at once.
• Reset index answers the click at once.
• Uninstalling HoudiniMD gives F1 back to the Houdini help. Before, F1 in Houdini still pointed at HoudiniMD after the app was gone.
• Back and forward return you to where you were on the page. Before, they opened the page at its top, so a link followed from the middle of a page cost you your place.

HoudiniMD v0.1.0-beta.3

Features

• A node with more than one version has a version selector in the page header. Search lists only the newest version of a node.
• A link to another site shows its title, description and image when you point at it. A link to a section of the same page shows the words it lands on.
• A new video player. Only one video plays at a time, and you can seek in a video.
• Printing a page prints the page alone, at full length, in the light theme.
• The arguments table of a VEX function has Type, Name and Description columns.
• The sidebar shows the folders in the order of the help.
• In a narrow window, the panel shows as a card over the page.

Fixes

• A press on a link or a breadcrumb no longer freezes the window. The new page shows at once, and a long page draws its top first.
• A long index page, such as the SOP node list, scrolls smoothly. A press on a link in it takes 21 ms, not 250 ms.
• The window and each page draw in one step, with their icons. No more half-drawn page or row of blank icons, also on the back button.
• The sidebar marks the page on screen.
• HOM, hotkey and web server links now open their page. Each HOM method has its own anchor, so a link to hou.Node#type lands on the method. This fixes 174 broken links.
• The list of contents, a same-page link and a search hit jump to the section at once, clear of the page bar.
• The app uses less memory, most of all while its window is hidden.
• On an index page, Ctrl+L copies nodes/sop/index.md, not nodes/sop/.md.

HoudiniMD v0.1.0-beta.2

First release.

• Reads the documentation from the Houdini build installed on this machine. Works with no network.
• Finds the Houdini installs by itself. The version card in the sidebar switches between them, and has a Pick a folder… row for an install it cannot find.
• F1 in Houdini opens the page in the app, inside Houdini's own help window. A heading or a parameter lands on its own row.
• Ctrl+K searches every node, VEX function and HOM call. A pasted SideFX or HoudiniMD link opens its page, at its section.
• Ctrl+C copies the page as Markdown. Ctrl+D bookmarks it. Ctrl+L copies its local address.
• Ctrl+N opens a new window. Ctrl+click on a link opens the page in a new window.
• Bookmarks and recent pages, shared between the app window and Houdini's help window.
• Closing the window keeps the app in the notification area, so F1 stays fast.
• A first-launch setup: pick the Houdini build, set the F1 hook, install the Houdini MCP for your agent, and choose whether to send anonymous usage data.
• Updates itself at launch, before the window shows.

Windows says the publisher is unknown

The installer is not signed yet. Windows shows "Windows protected your PC".
Select More info, then Run anyway. A signature costs money and needs a
legal entity, and it is on the list.

Money

Free. No account, no subscription, no paid tier today. A doc page is public
and belongs to SideFX, so a doc page is never going behind a payment. Paid
features later will be things the app makes: your own notes on a page, an
index of your studio's assets, differences between two Houdini builds.