Glint

Glint is a privacy-first Markdown viewer, editor, and wiki. The browser app opens Markdown from a local folder, Google Drive, a GitHub repository, or any raw Markdown URL (read-only); files remain in their selected backend. See Live Demo Site

Capabilities

• Opinionated rendering of Markdown with extensions geared towards technical writing
  • Standard Github-flavored Markdown
  • Syntax highlighted code blocks
  • LaTeX equations (inline + display mode), with labeled equations and [[#eq:key]] cross-references
  • Mermaid diagrams and TikZ pictures (compiled to SVG in the browser)
  • Sanitized semantic HTML plus sandboxed custom HTML blocks
  • Task lists
  • Wiki links
  • References / Citations
  • Supported Markdown agent skill
• In-place editing (hit e to edit the section under the mouse cursor) and commenting (on supported backends)
• Paste-based image uploading: paste an image into the editor to store it as a portable sidecar beside the page (page.md.<id>.png)
• Raw .html files in a workspace are listed alongside pages and shown verbatim in a sandboxed iframe (markup, CSS, and images render; page scripts do not run)
• Export the current page from the SPA, or
• Offline rendering to portable HTML with the glint-md render CLI.
• Offline markdown processor for e.g. VimR via glint-md render --stdin --body-only

Getting started

Glint is hosted at https://glint.jbarb.io. It is entirely browser-based, so there's no need to run it locally or deploy it.

Glint supports either single files or "projects"; a project is a local folder, Google Drive folder, or GitHub repo. Drive/Github files/projects can be accessed by pasting their URLs into the landing page.

Running it fully local

If your environment won't let the hosted site open a local folder (e.g. a corp policy that blocks sending local data to glint.jbarb.io), run the same SPA from your own machine — all origins and data stay local:

npm install --global glint-md
glint-md app          # serves http://localhost:8080/#/local and opens a browser
glint-md app --port 3000 --no-open

Offline rendering

Install the CLI:

npm install --global glint-md

glint-md render notes/paper.md
glint-md render notes/paper.md --output output.html --color-scheme nord

# Piped mode for use as a markdown processor
cat notes/paper.md | glint-md render --stdin --body-only

# Print the Glint Markdown extension reference
glint-md --skill

Development / contribution

We use a very agent-heavy process; see AGENTS.md for workflows and docs/spa-setup.md for deployment.

npm install
npm run build

Publishing the CLI

Package maintainers publish glint-md from a clean main checkout:

npm install
npm test
npm run build
npm pack --dry-run
npm login
npm version <patch|minor|major>
npm publish
git push --follow-tags

Check the dry-run manifest before changing the version: it should contain dist/, the renderer styles under assets/, and the glint-md executable. npm publish runs the prepack TypeScript build; it does not publish the SPA.