Read Markdown architecture docs in your terminal — with Mermaid diagrams rendered inline.
glowm is a terminal-first Markdown viewer for developers who keep design docs, ADRs, and diagrams next to the code. It renders Markdown beautifully in the terminal, displays Mermaid diagrams inline on modern terminals like iTerm2, Kitty, and Ghostty, and can export diagrams to PDF when you need to share them outside the terminal.
Stop opening a browser just to preview Mermaid diagrams in Markdown.
Many engineering teams keep architecture notes, runbooks, ADRs, and design documents in Markdown. Mermaid makes those docs more useful, but most terminal Markdown viewers leave Mermaid blocks as plain code.
glowm keeps the whole workflow in your terminal:
- Inline Mermaid diagrams on iTerm2, Kitty, and Ghostty
- PDF export for Mermaid diagrams when you need an artifact
- Pager-first reading for long documentation files
- STDIN support for piping generated docs or command output
- Glow-like Markdown rendering with familiar terminal ergonomics
- Reading architecture docs and ADRs without leaving the terminal
- Previewing Mermaid-heavy README files before committing
- Reviewing documentation in SSH sessions or terminal-only workflows
- Exporting diagrams from Markdown docs to PDF
- Teams that prefer docs-as-code over browser-only documentation tools
brew tap atani/tap
brew install glowmgo install github.com/atani/glowm/cmd/glowm@latest# Render Markdown to ANSI output
glowm README.md
# Read from STDIN
cat README.md | glowm -
# Export Mermaid diagrams to PDF
glowm --pdf README.md > diagrams.pdfWhen stdout is a supported terminal, Mermaid code blocks are rendered inline as images:
- iTerm2
- Kitty
- Ghostty
On other terminals, Mermaid blocks gracefully fall back to code blocks.
Chrome or Chromium is required for Mermaid rendering and PDF export.
| Feature | glowm | Glow | Browser preview | VS Code preview |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terminal Markdown reading | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Inline Mermaid diagrams in terminal | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Mermaid PDF export | ✅ | ❌ | Varies | Varies |
| Works with STDIN / pipes | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Good for SSH / terminal-only workflows | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Docs stay close to the codebase | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
-wWord wrap width-sStyle name (dark,light,auto,notty,ascii,dracula,pink,tokyo-night) or JSON style path-pForce pager output, overriding--no-pager--no-pagerDisable default pager; pager is on by default for TTY--pdfExport Mermaid diagrams to PDF via stdout--show-link-urlsShow raw link URLs instead of just the link text (see Links)--versionShow version information
In the terminal, [text](url) is shown as just text, rendered as an OSC 8
hyperlink that you can click on terminals that support it (iTerm2, Kitty,
Ghostty, and others). The URL is not printed inline, which keeps prose readable
and avoids the duplicated output bare URLs would otherwise produce.
When output is piped or redirected (a non-TTY), OSC 8 hyperlinks are not
clickable, so the raw URL is always kept to preserve the link target. Pass
--show-link-urls to always print the raw URL, including on a TTY.
Because the URL is hidden by default, the visible link text can differ from
the actual target (the usual OSC 8 hyperlink tradeoff). When viewing Markdown
from an untrusted source, run with --show-link-urls so you can see where each
link points.
glowm reads the config file from the OS-specific user config directory:
- macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/glowm/config.json - Linux:
~/.config/glowm/config.jsonor$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/glowm/config.json - Windows:
%AppData%\\glowm\\config.json
Example:
{
"pager": {
"mode": "vim"
}
}- Go, when installing from source
- Chrome or Chromium, required for Mermaid rendering and PDF export
- A terminal with image support for inline diagrams: iTerm2, Kitty, or Ghostty
Maintainers can use docs/launch-kit.md for English launch copy and docs/global-launch-checklist.md for repository metadata and posting order.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for development notes.
MIT. See LICENSE.