md-computer

A Markdown-native UI DSL that compiles to React + shadcn/ui.

Write your UI like a product spec — describe layout, components, props, bindings, and actions in plain Markdown. Get type-safe shadcn/ui React out the other side.

Status: alpha (v0.3). APIs may still change.

Install

pnpm add -D md-computer
# or: npm i -D md-computer

Example

app/settings/page.md:

---
title: Settings
---

# Settings
@stack gap=8

## Profile
@card
@form submit="saveProfile"
Input name="displayName" label="Display name" placeholder="Vlad"
Input name="email" label="Email" type="email"
Button type="submit"
  Save changes

## Billing
@card
Badge variant="secondary"
  Pro plan
Text tone="muted"
  Your next invoice is due on {{ billing.nextInvoiceDate }}.
Button variant="outline" action="openBillingPortal"
  Manage billing

Compile it:

npx md-computer compile app/settings/page.md

You get a typed React component (page.tsx) and a sibling page.actions.ts stub you fill in with your real handlers. Any shadcn primitives the page references that aren't installed yet are added automatically via npx shadcn add.

How it reads

• # Title / ## Section — page + section headings
• @directive — layout/structure wrappers (@stack, @grid, @card, @form, @section)
• Component prop=value — leaf components (capitalised names matched against the registry)
• child text — indented continuation becomes the component's children
• {{ binding.path }} — typed data passed in as bindings props
• action="name" — wired to actions.name() in the sibling page.actions.ts
• @form submit="name" — wraps in <form onSubmit> and calls actions.name(formData)

CLI

md-computer compile <input.md>                     # writes <input>.tsx + .actions.ts; auto-installs missing shadcn primitives
md-computer compile <input.md> --no-install-shadcn # skip the auto-install
md-computer compile <input.md> --out Page.tsx      # custom output path

Vite plugin

// vite.config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "vite";
import mdComputer from "md-computer/vite";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [mdComputer()],
});

Importing a .md file gives you the compiled React component as the default export. Missing shadcn primitives are installed on first transform; HMR works automatically.

Tailwind setup (one extra line)

Each .md is compiled to a real .tsx file under <projectRoot>/.md-computer/ so Tailwind's source scanner can discover the codegen-emitted classes (p-8, shadow-lg, text-xl, etc). You only need to point Tailwind at that dir:

@import "tailwindcss";
@source "../.md-computer/**/*.tsx";

Add .md-computer/ to your .gitignore — it's a build-time cache that's regenerated on every transform.

If you'd rather not have an on-disk cache, pass cache: false and add classes via @source inline(...) yourself:

mdComputer({ cache: false })

Built-in components

Layout: @stack, @grid, @card, @form, @section Form: Input, Textarea, Switch Action: Button Display: Badge, Text

Requires components.json in your project root (run npx shadcn@latest init once if you don't have it).

Style props

Every directive and component accepts className="..." as an escape hatch — it's merged with codegen-emitted classes via tailwind-merge, so user classes win cleanly (p-6 p-12 → p-12).

Curated semantic tokens:

Where	Props
@card	`padding=none
@stack / @grid	`align=start
Button	`width=full
Text	`tone=default

Anything not in the table can be expressed with className="..." directly.

License

MIT