mdview

A local markdown viewer for reading long, hierarchical docs without losing focus. Run a command, browser opens with a beautifully rendered, navigable view of your file or folder. Edits in your editor show up live. Close terminal to stop.

mdview ./docs              # browse a folder
mdview README.md           # view a single file
mdview                     # current directory

Why

Reading long markdown docs is hard:

• You scroll, get distracted, come back, can't find your spot.
• Deep inside a subsection, you forget how it relates to the parent topic.
• AI-generated brainstorming docs grow as you iterate — paste-and-render tools can't keep up.
• Raw markdown without color or rhythm is monotonous over hundreds of lines.

mdview is built for that. It's a single-machine, single-user, read-only viewer with editorial typography, persistent navigation, and live reload.

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/hardikg2907/mdview.git
cd mdview
npm install
npm run build
npm install -g .          # puts `mdview` on your PATH

Or run from source without global install:

npm install && npm run build
node bin/mdview.mjs ./docs

Share with friends without publishing

npm run build && npm pack    # produces mdview-0.6.0.tgz

Send them the .tgz (Slack/Drive/AirDrop). They install with:

npm install -g ./mdview-0.6.0.tgz

Or skip the tarball entirely:

npm install -g github:hardikg2907/mdview
# or one-shot
npx github:hardikg2907/mdview ./docs

The prepare script auto-builds on their machine if bin/ is absent.

Usage

mdview <path>              # file or folder
mdview                     # current directory
mdview --port 9000         # custom port (default 7331; auto-fallback unless --port is explicit)
mdview --no-open           # don't auto-launch the browser
mdview --help              # show usage

Closes when you Ctrl-C or kill the process. Set MDVIEW_DEBUG=1 for full stack traces on unexpected errors.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
⌘P / Ctrl+P	Quick file switcher (fuzzy search)
⌘F / Ctrl+F or /	Open in-doc search
⇧⌘F / Ctrl+Shift+F	Open folder-wide search
⌘B / Ctrl+B	Toggle file tree
⌘. / Ctrl+.	Toggle outline
⌘\ / Ctrl+\	Toggle theme
j / k	Next / previous heading
gg / ⇧G	Top / bottom of document
[ / ]	Previous / next heading at the same level
⇧H / ⇧L	Previous / next file in folder
Ctrl+D / Ctrl+U	Half-page down / up
Alt / ⌥ + scroll	Fast scroll (~4×) in the main pane
f / m	Toggle focus mode / minimap
e / ⇧E	Expand all / collapse all sections
Tab (in search)	Cycle Doc ↔ Folder scope
Enter / Shift+Enter	Next / previous match in search
Esc	Close search / lightbox / panel
?	Open shortcuts panel

Click the keyboard icon in the header anytime to see the full list.

Features

Reading

• 3-pane layout: folder tree, content, outline. Both sidebars collapse to a thin label rail; both have drag handles to resize (widths persist).
• Editorial typography (serif body, italic accent H1, paper-grain background, JetBrains Mono in code blocks).
• Light & dark theme — follows your OS preference, with a manual override that persists.
• Five built-in palettes: classic / paper / nord / solarized / high-contrast. Pick one from the header palette swatch. Code blocks follow the palette (Nord syntax in Nord, Solarized in Solarized, etc.).
• Reading-progress bar pinned to the bottom of the header.
• Doc stats strip below the H1 (reading time, word count, heading count, "Updated N ago").
• Focus mode dims everything except the section at the viewport center.
• Optional minimap rail at the right edge: bars per heading, draggable to scroll, viewport indicator follows.

Navigation

• Folder tree sidebar; click any file to load it. Cross-file [link](other.md) navigates inside the viewer.
• Outline sidebar with scroll-spy and collapsible nesting. Six toggle pills (H1–H6) filter which levels show.
• Breadcrumbs in the header reflecting your current viewport heading; click any segment to jump.
• Stable per-heading anchors. Hover any heading to reveal a # link that copies a deep-link URL.
• Collapsible sections — every heading has a hover-revealed chevron that folds the section's content; anchor links auto-expand their target. e / ⇧E expand or collapse the whole doc.
• ⌘P quick file switcher with fuzzy matching across the whole tree.

Rendering

• CommonMark + GFM (tables, task lists, strikethrough, autolinks).
• Server-side syntax highlighting via Shiki, palette-aware (10 variants per token — one for every palette/theme combination) — zero client highlighter bundle, no re-render on theme/palette swap.
• Mermaid diagrams, lazy-loaded only when a doc contains a mermaid fence.
• Math via KaTeX ($inline$ and $$block$$), lazy-loaded only when a doc contains math.
• Custom-styled task list checkboxes (filled accent when checked, hollow when unchecked).
• Front matter detected and shown as a small collapsible metadata block.
• Inline HTML pass-through (your content, your trust).
• Images render via a safe /__asset/* route with relative-path resolution against the file's folder. Click any image to open in a lightbox.
• External links get an ↗ icon and open in a new tab with noopener noreferrer.

Live reload

• File edits show up instantly. Scroll position and outline collapse state are preserved.

Search

• In-doc search highlights all matches; counter shows current position; Enter/Shift+Enter step through them.
• Folder-wide search greps every markdown file (⇧⌘F or the Folder toggle); results grouped by file with snippets, click any hit to open that file.
• Three options on the search bar: Aa (case-sensitive), ab (whole word), .* (regex).

Polish

• Loading skeleton while files first load.
• Smooth transitions on theme swap, sidebar collapse, outline highlight.
• Copy button on every code block.
• Subtle hover tooltips on every header control.

Config

Two layered files, both optional, same schema:

• Global: ~/.config/mdview/config.json (honours $XDG_CONFIG_HOME) — your machine-wide defaults.
• Per-project: .mdview.json at the folder root — overrides global for this folder.

{
  "palette": "nord",
  "fontFamily": "serif",
  "lineWidth": "70ch",
  "defaultCollapsed": { "tree": false, "outline": false },
  "ignore": ["deps", "_site"]
}

All fields optional. Validated on load — invalid values fall back silently with a warning. Edit the per-project file while the server is running and the SPA picks up palette/font/lineWidth changes live; ignore is read once at startup (the file watcher's skip list is frozen — restart mdview after editing).

ignore extends the built-in skip list (which already covers node_modules, dist, build, out, target, coverage, vendor, __pycache__, venv, Pods, DerivedData, _build, plus every dotfile/dotdir). Add your own basenames here — handy when running mdview at a repo root with non-standard build dirs to avoid EMFILE: too many open files from the OS file-watch limit.

You can edit the ignore list from the CLI without opening the JSON:

mdview config path                  # print the global config path
mdview config ignore list           # show built-in + user-added entries
mdview config ignore add deps _site # add one or more basenames
mdview config ignore rm  deps       # remove one or more basenames

Stack

Node 20+, TypeScript, Fastify 5, markdown-it 14, Shiki 1, gray-matter, chokidar 4, Preact 10 + @preact/signals, KaTeX 0.16, mermaid 11 (lazy), JetBrains Mono via @fontsource, Vite 6, tsup 8, vitest 2.

Documentation

• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md — how the system is put together
• docs/CONTRIBUTING.md — dev workflow + how to add features
• docs/FEATURES.md — comprehensive feature catalog
• TODO.md — roadmap (phase 3, phase 4)
• VERIFICATION.md — manual verification scenarios

Tests

npm test            # vitest, server + client (289 tests)
npm run typecheck   # both tsconfigs
npm run build       # vite (client) + tsup (server CLI)

Reporting issues

Found a bug or have a feature request? File it at github.com/hardikg2907/mdview/issues.

License

MIT.