GPU-native · Rust · Linux · v0.1.0

markdown-delight

A tabful, tiling Linux Markdown editor that opens any .md into a gorgeous, themeable, native-snappy surface — not a flat gray pane.

Rust end-to-end: gpui renders every pixel on the GPU and comrak turns CommonMark+GFM into native elements — no webview. Live source ▸ preview, a Google-Docs-style comment mode, tiling multi-pane with per-pane themes, and a real CRT barrel warp. Set it as your system default .md handler.

▾ Get v0.1.0 ★ Star on GitHub ⌨ Build from source
markdown-delight — native Markdown on the GPU · tabs · tiling splits · comment mode
markdown-delight editing a Markdown document in the hacker theme: a line-numbered source rail, tabs and split controls in the title bar, and glowing phosphor-green text on a CRT tube
▶ Real capture — the hacker theme editing a live document: native render, tabs, tiling splits, a line-number rail, and that CRT phosphor glow. Comment mode + live theme-switching recording coming soon.
Overview

A Markdown editor you keep open because it's nice.

Most Markdown apps pick one: a code editor that shows raw text, or a viewer that renders it behind a webview. markdown-delight does both natively — edit on the left, watch comrak render to real GPU elements on the right, live. The CRT look (scanlines, glow, a genuine per-pane barrel warp) is data, not chrome: themes are TOML files you edit while the app runs, no recompile. And because it's a real .md handler, double-clicking a Markdown file finally opens something worth looking at.

Features

What's in 0.1.0

❝

Comment mode

A per-pane, Google-Docs-style review surface. Click a block or drag-select a span; a solid "device" panel flies out to leave remarks. Comments live in ~/.config, never beside your .md — so they can't be committed by accident.

▤

Native Markdown render

comrak parses CommonMark + GFM (tables, task lists, strikethrough, autolinks) into GPUI elements — headings, code blocks, quotes, lists. No webview, no Electron.

⇄

Live source ▸ preview

Edit in a rope-backed source pane; every preview pane of the same doc re-renders as you type. Ctrl+E flips a pane between source and rendered.

▦

Tiling multi-pane

Tiling-tree splits that divide only the focused pane, tabs, sub-tab drag-to-split/move, window pop-out, scratch notebooks, and session restore.

⌶

IDE-grade editing

Rope buffer with full text selection — Shift+Arrows/Home/End, word & document motion, select-all, system clipboard, word-delete, shift-click.

↻

Hot-reload CRT themes

Four built-ins plus a seed-colour wheel, read from ~/.config/markdown-delight/theme.toml and reloaded on save — per-pane, no restart.

Run it

It's a real native app — run the real thing.

No web demo of the engine, on purpose.

markdown-delight renders on the GPU through gpui/wgpu — it isn't a webpage and a browser shell wouldn't be the real engine. Grab the source and run the actual app on your Linux box. (There is a zero-build browser design reference — the source ▸ preview prototype that drives the theme tokens and chrome — but the product is native.)

⌨ Build & run v0.1.0 ↗
Vision

Markdown that's a pleasure to live in.

The sibling of terminal-delight, same soul: look gorgeous, run native-snappy, be fully themeable, stay open source. A Markdown surface you reach for because it's delightful — with reviewing that feels like Google Docs, not a diff.

  • Native speed, never a webview.
  • Aesthetics as data — share a theme as a TOML file.
  • Your comments stay yours — off your repo, by default.

Read the build plan ↗

Honesty

Source-only. Linux-only. On purpose.

markdown-delight's own code is MIT, and the editor core is clean-room original work on ropey — Zed's GPL editor crate was never used. But it builds against a pinned Zed/gpui graph that links GPL-3.0 crates, so a redistributed binary would be GPL-3.0. We don't ship binaries; you build from source.

It targets the freedesktop Linux desktop (X11 & Wayland) via gpui's wgpu renderer. Not macOS or Windows.

License boundary, in detail ↗

Build & run

From source

# one-time: the pinned gpui source beside this repo, at the exact pin + our patch
git clone https://github.com/zed-industries/zed ../zed-upstream
cd ../zed-upstream
git checkout abbe85a3321bf6cb7f5b241e623d9c2e16c29187
git apply ../markdown-delight/patches/td-crt-pass.patch
cd ../markdown-delight

# run it on any Markdown file
cd app && cargo run -- ../README.md
# become the system default .md handler (+ icon)
cargo build --release && ../scripts/make-default.sh

gpui is consumed from a pinned Zed checkout carrying the td-crt-pass renderer patch (the per-pane barrel warp) as a sibling zed-upstream/ directory. Full prerequisites, the system dependencies, and troubleshooting are in BUILDING.md ↗; the contributor bar and clean-room rule are in CONTRIBUTING.md ↗.

Keys: Ctrl+E source↔preview · Ctrl+S save · Ctrl+Shift+C comment mode · Ctrl+Shift+A all comments · Ctrl+Alt+R/Ctrl+Alt+D split · Ctrl+Shift+T new tab.

Release notes Source ↗