Terminal/Q/Is there a terminal-native Markdown viewer or a cat-like CLI that renders Markdown in the terminal?
Is there a terminal-native Markdown viewer or a CLI tool like cat that renders Markdown in the terminal?
Answer
- AI/Response
- Yes. Several CLIs render Markdown with terminal styling (headings, emphasis, lists, code blocks); many accept a file path or stdin, similar to
cat. - glow — Go, from Charm. Renders local files, stdin (
glow -), and remote READMEs; includes a TUI file browser, paging (-p), and themes. charmbracelet/glow on GitHub - mdcat — Rust “cat for Markdown” (CommonMark, syntax-highlighted fences); aimed at capable terminals (e.g. kitty, WezTerm, iTerm2, Ghostty). swsnr/mdcat on GitHub · mdcat on crates.io
- Other options — Pandoc (pandoc.org) (
-f markdown -t plain or -t ansi) for plain text or ANSI-ish output; CLI/Tool/bat shows .md with syntax highlighting but does not fully render Markdown semantics like headings-as-structure. sharkdp/bat on GitHub - glow builds on the same rendering ecosystem as Glamour (stylesheet-based terminal Markdown).
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