readm3

Markdown editing and sharing for people and teams, with a terminal reader and editor. File browser on the left, the rendered document on the right, and nothing else in the way. Press e to edit the file you are looking at, esc to see it rendered again.

CommonMark and GitHub Flavored Markdown, plus the extras each dialect added on top: GitHub alerts, footnotes and :emoji:, and Reddit spoilers, superscript and r/ u/ links.

Built on HQTUI — truecolor, mouse, and a terminal that gets restored no matter how the process dies.

╭─  readm3  ──────────── 6 ─╮╭─  README.md  ────────────────────────────────────── 24% ─╮
│ ▾ docs                    ││ readm3                                                   │
│     usage.md              ││ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ │
│   README.md               ││                                                          │
│   CHANGELOG.md            ││ A terminal markdown reader. File browser on the left, the │
│                           ││ rendered document on the right.                          │
│                           ││                                                          │
│                           ││ Install                                                  │
│                           ││ ─────────                                                │
│                           ││                                                          │
│                           ││ ┌─ bash ────────────────────────────────────────────────  │
│                           ││ │ bun add -g @profullstack/readm3                        │
│                           ││ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────  │
╰───────────────────────────╯╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
 ↑↓ move  ↵ open  ←→ fold  / find  tab reader  ? keys  q quit              docs  dark

Install

One line. It installs under ~/.local and never asks for sudo; with no Node 22+ on the machine it fetches a private official Node first:

curl -fsSL https://readm3.com/install.sh | sh

Update with readm3 update and remove with readm3 uninstall; both work the way readm3 was installed (this installer, npm, bun, pnpm or yarn), through @profullstack/cli. Add --desktop to install the desktop editor as well (Linux x64; macOS and Windows download it, see Desktop app):

curl -fsSL https://readm3.com/install.sh | sh -s -- --desktop

Or with a package manager:

bun add -g @profullstack/readm3     # Bun is the default runtime
npm  install -g @profullstack/readm3 # Node 22.6+ works too

Or run it without installing:

bunx @profullstack/readm3
npx  @profullstack/readm3

Use

readm3                  # browse markdown under the current directory
readm3 ./docs           # browse a directory
readm3 CHANGELOG.md     # open a file, browse its directory
readm3 sales.csv        # a CSV or TSV opens as a sortable, filterable grid
readm3 --theme nord     # pick a palette

Printing

--print renders straight to stdout and exits, so it works in a pipe and as a cat for markdown:

readm3 --print CHANGELOG.md          # rendered, colored, to the terminal
readm3 --print README.md | less -R   # into a pager
curl -s https://example.com/x.md | readm3 --print
readm3 --print notes.md | grep TODO  # no escapes when stdout is a pipe
readm3 --print data.csv              # a CSV or TSV prints as an aligned table

Color follows the usual rules: on when stdout is a terminal, off when it is not, and NO_COLOR / FORCE_COLOR are honored. --color always|never|auto overrides that either way. With --print, --width sets the render width rather than the sidebar.

The browser shows markdown and tables (.csv, .tsv, .tab, .psv). Directories with nothing beneath them are pruned, node_modules and friends are never walked, and README sorts first.

Keys

↑ ↓ j k	move or scroll	tab	switch pane
→ ← l h	expand or collapse	/	filter files
enter	open the file	esc	clear the filter
space b	page down / up	r	rescan and reload
g G	top / bottom	[ ]	sidebar width
e i	edit this file	s	reveal spoilers
ctrl+s	save	?	help
		q ctrl+c	quit

The mouse works too: the wheel scrolls whichever pane it is over, and a click opens a file.

Tables

A CSV or TSV opens as a grid instead of as text, in the spirit of tabiew: a frozen header, row numbers, a cell cursor, and columns that scroll in from the side. The delimiter (comma, tab, semicolon, pipe) and the header row are detected, quoted fields with commas and line breaks are read correctly, and every column is typed (number, date, yes/no, text) so sorting and comparisons read values the way people do.

← ↑ ↓ → h j k l	move the cell cursor (← on the first column returns to the files)
0 $	first / last column
o	sort by the cursor's column: ascending, descending, off
/	filter the rows
enter	the row as a sheet, every column on its own line
c	the column's statistics: rows, empty, distinct, min, max, sum, mean, median, top values
v	the raw text instead of the grid
e	edit the text, as with any file

The filter takes space-separated terms that must all match: london (any cell), city:london (that column contains it), status=open, country!=US, age>30, price<=9.99, joined>=2024-01-01, #3>10 (the third column), and !draft to negate. Quote a value with spaces: city:"new york".

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗