Ever since I started using Claude Code way more often, I found myself constantly switching out of the terminal just to view READMEs or check Mermaid diagrams. It was breaking my flow. So I built mdview
- a simple CLI tool that renders markdown right in your terminal. The problem it solves: When you’re working with Claude Code in the terminal and need to quickly check documentation or see what a Mermaid diagram looks like, you don’t want to leave your workflow. You just want to mdview README.md and see it rendered nicely. What makes it useful: Renders markdown with proper formatting Converts Mermaid diagrams to ASCII art (this was the killer feature for me) Fast startup - under 50ms Works with stdin so you can pipe stuff into it Quick install: bash curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tzachbon/mdview/main/install.sh | sh Usage:
pipe from anywhere
curl -s
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/user/repo/main/README.md
| mdview -
works with git too
git show HEAD:README.md | mdview - ```
Built it with Bun + TypeScript. It's open source (ISC license).
GitHub:
https://github.com/tzachbon/mdview
Would love to hear if anyone else has this problem or if you try it out!
submitted by
/u/tzachbon
Originally posted by u/tzachbon on r/ClaudeCodeYou must log in or # to comment.