mdp — Markdown Preview Server

A single long-running local server that previews any markdown file by path, with GitHub-flavored rendering and live reload.

Unlike gh markdown-preview which blocks the terminal and spawns a new server per file, mdp runs one background server that handles any file you throw at it.

Install

# Build from source (installs to ~/.local/bin)
git clone https://github.com/wbingli/mdp.git
cd mdp
make install

# Or via go install
go install github.com/wbingli/mdp@latest

Usage

# Start server in background
mdp start

# Preview a file (auto-starts server if needed)
mdp open README.md

# Check server status
mdp status

# Restart server
mdp restart

# Stop server
mdp stop

# Run server in foreground (for debugging)
mdp serve

Shell alias

Add to your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc:

md() { mdp open "$@"; }

Then just:

md README.md

Features

• GitHub-flavored markdown — renders with goldmark GFM (tables, strikethrough, autolinks, task lists)
• GitHub styling — uses github-markdown-css with automatic dark/light mode
• Live reload — edit a file and the browser updates instantly via SSE
• Relative images — ![img](./images/foo.png) just works
• Recent files — visit http://localhost:6419/ to see recently previewed files
• Single binary — no runtime dependencies
• Auto-start — mdp open starts the server automatically if it's not running

How it works

The URL scheme maps the file's absolute path directly to the URL path:

mdp open README.md
→ http://localhost:6419/Users/you/project/README.md

Non-markdown files (images, etc.) are served raw, so relative references in markdown resolve naturally.

File changes are detected via fsnotify at the directory level, debounced at 100ms, and pushed to the browser as re-rendered HTML over Server-Sent Events.

Configuration

mdp serve --port 8080 --host 0.0.0.0

Server logs and PID file are stored in ~/.mdp/.

License

MIT