mdview

Render Markdown files in your terminal with ANSI color and formatting. Zero external dependencies — pure Go stdlib.

Repository layout

tools/mdview/
├── main.go    # CLI entry point
├── render.go  # Rendering engine
├── go.mod
└── README.md

Build

cd tools/mdview
go build -o mdview .

Or install to $GOPATH/bin:

go install github.com/adrianpriza-ai/mdview@latest

Usage

mdview [--width N] <file.md>
cat README.md | mdview

mdview reads from a file path or from stdin when no path is given. Terminal width is detected automatically via TIOCGWINSZ with a fallback of 80 columns. Use --width to override.

Flags

Flag	Short	Description
--width N	-w N	Wrap output to N columns instead of auto-detected terminal width
--help	-h	Show help

Examples

# View a local file
mdview README.md

# Specify a fixed render width
mdview --width 100 README.md

# Pipe from stdin
cat CHANGELOG.md | mdview

# Pipe to a pager (preserves colors)
mdview README.md | less -R

# Fetch and render a remote file
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cli/cli/trunk/README.md | mdview

Preview

Supported Markdown

Feature	Syntax
Headings (ATX)	# through ######
Headings (setext)	underline with === / ---
Bold	**text** or __text__
Italic	*text* or _text_
Bold + italic	***text***
Strikethrough	~~text~~
Inline code	`code`
Fenced code blocks	``` with optional language label
Blockquotes	> text
Unordered lists	- item / * item
Ordered lists	1. item
Nested lists	two-space indent
Tables (GFM)	pipe-delimited, column alignment
Links	[text](url)
Auto-links	<https://example.com>
Images	 → renders as [alt] label
Horizontal rules	--- / *** / ___
Centered blocks	<div align="center"> / <p align="center">

Table rendering

Tables automatically shrink to fit the terminal (or --width). Cells word-wrap across multiple rows when needed; words wider than their column are hard-broken. Inline markup — bold, italic, inline code, links — is fully rendered inside table cells.

Centered blocks

HTML center blocks render all content flush-centered to the terminal width. Inside a <div align="center"> or <p align="center"> block, the following are supported and styled:

• ATX markdown headings (# h1 through ###### h6) — bold + color by level
• HTML headings (<h1> through <h6>)
• Inline images (<img>) → rendered as [alt]
• Inline links (<a>) → rendered as link text
• HTML line breaks (<br>)
• HTML entities (&, <, >, ", &#NNN;, ­, …)