Markdown Preview

Type Markdown on the left, see GitHub-flavored HTML on the right. Tables, task lists, strikethrough, and fenced code blocks render exactly as GitHub renders them. Live word count and read-time counter sit in the header. Export to HTML or copy as raw HTML for embedding.

What Markdown gives you

A text format where the source is readable and the rendered output is structured. Headings, lists, tables, links, emphasis, code — all expressible without leaving plain ASCII. It became the default writing format for engineers because it round-trips cleanly between editors, version control, and viewers — your README on GitHub, your wiki on Notion, your prompts to an LLM, all the same syntax.

What GFM adds over plain Markdown

• Tables — pipe-delimited
• Task lists — - [ ] and - [x]
• Strikethrough — ~~text~~
• Autolinks — bare URLs become links
• Fenced code blocks — triple-backtick with optional language hint
• Footnotes — [^1] references

Almost every modern Markdown is GFM in practice. Our renderer matches GitHub’s behavior closely enough that a README rendered here looks the same on GitHub.

Common workflows

Drafting a README. Compose here, paste into the repository. The preview matches what GitHub will show, so no surprise on the first push.

Composing a long Slack message. Slack accepts limited Markdown — bold, italics, code. Use the preview to verify your formatting before paste.

Writing technical docs offline. No setup, no plugins. The editor handles 50 KB documents fluidly.

Converting Markdown to HTML for a custom site. Compose, copy the HTML, paste into your blog template. Skip the static site generator for one-off pages.

Why Markdown won

The format is readable as source. Other markup languages — HTML, AsciiDoc, reST — render gorgeously, but the source files take training to read. Markdown’s source survives flattening — pasted into Slack, copied to email, viewed cat-style in a terminal — and it still communicates structure. That property made it the lingua franca of technical writing.

Last updated: 2025-01-15