--- title: "I Just Wanted to Read Markdown in My Terminal" description: "Most Markdown files aren't just text anymore — they have tables, images, and Mermaid diagrams that cat can't render. So I built a terminal viewer that can." doc_version: "1" last_updated: "2026-10-27" date: 2026-10-27 tags: [Markdown, Terminal, Go, Open Source, LunaRoute, MDV] canonical: "https://eran.sandler.co.il/post/2026-10-27-i-just-wanted-to-read-markdown-in-my-terminal/" --- ## Sitemap - [Home](https://eran.sandler.co.il/) I'm in the terminal, reading some documentation, and I come across a Mermaid diagram. I want to quickly understand the flow, but instead I'm staring at a bunch of arrows, brackets, and text. The table below it stretches beyond the edge of the screen, and the image is just a filename. This happens quite a bit. I spend a lot of time in the terminal, and most of my Markdown files aren't just text anymore. They have diagrams, tables, images, and other things that don't translate particularly well to `cat` or `less`. Sure, I could open a browser or an editor with Markdown preview, but sometimes I just want to stay in the terminal and read the document. I looked at a few existing Markdown viewers, but none did quite what I wanted. So I built [MDV (Markdown Viewer)](https://github.com/erans/mdv). MDV rendering Markdown in the terminal ![MDV rendering Markdown in the terminal](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/erans/mdv/main/docs/screenshot.svg) It's written in Go and renders Markdown directly in the terminal, including properly formatted tables, images, and Mermaid diagrams. It also has the usual conveniences you'd expect from a document viewer, like search and navigation. ![MDV rendering Mermaid diagrams](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/erans/mdv/main/docs/flowchart.svg) ## Why build another Markdown viewer? A few years ago, I probably wouldn't have bothered. It's a relatively small annoyance, and spending a weekend building a tool just for that might not have seemed worthwhile. But things have changed. Working with [LunaRoute](https://www.lunaroute.com) means I have access to practically unlimited tokens. I used DeepSeek 4.1 Flash to build MDV, and I could keep experimenting, fixing things, and adding features without thinking about how many tokens each iteration consumed. That's something I've found increasingly interesting about AI-assisted development. It changes which problems are worth solving. Things that were previously too small or too specific to justify the effort suddenly become reasonable projects. I recently [wrote about the original open-source dream](https://eran.sandler.co.il/post/2026-10-19-the-original-open-source-dream-and-what-ai-changes/) and how AI makes it easier for people to build or modify software to fit their needs. MDV is a small example of that. I had a problem, couldn't find something that solved it the way I wanted, so I built it and made it open source. I suspect we'll see a lot more of these small, useful tools that exist simply because someone wanted them. Anyway, if you work with Markdown in the terminal, give it a try: **GitHub:** https://github.com/erans/mdv ```bash go install github.com/erans/mdv@latest mdv README.md ``` There are also [prebuilt binaries](https://github.com/erans/mdv/releases/latest) for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Sometimes you just want to scratch your own itch. Now it's much easier to do so.