Tired of stray .md note files cluttering my editor, so I built mdpad

[tbekaert]

I've always kept a scratchpad open while coding, somewhere to dump a quick todo, paste something I keep referencing, or jot down ideas before diving into a rabbit hole.

For a long time that was a random .md file in the editor. It took up a tab, it didn't really belong to any project, and it was always in the way.

Then I found sidebar-markdown-notes, which solved the tab problem by moving the notepad into the sidebar. Used it for quite a while and loved the concept.

At some point the preview/edit toggle started bugging me (plus some visual glitches in the rendering), so I dug into the code to fix things and ended up going pretty deep. mdpad is what I came out with.

I mostly use it for:

• A running todo of things I want to get back to in the current project
• Context I need while I work: endpoint shapes, env vars, stuff I'd lose mid-task otherwise
• Quick notes during a PR review or a meeting

My main focus on this project was definitely the editing feel. Syntax characters stay visible but dimmed, content is styled as you type, no toggle, no mode switching.

Beyond that, the things I'm most happy with are probably the small stuff:

• keyboard shortcuts for all formatting
• clickable checkboxes
• tables that auto-align as you type
• moving lines around with Alt+arrow

Notes are scoped per workspace by default so each project has its own. There's a global scope too if you want one scratchpad that follows you across all your projects.

Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=tbekaert.mdpad

Repo: https://github.com/tbekaert/vscode-mdpad, contributions very welcome.

Curious how other people handle "thinking out loud" while coding, and would love feedback on the extension itself if you give it a try.