October 3, 2025

tools markdown

I was running brew update and saw a new item whiz by called mdserve. This piqued my interest because I have been using Zed as my IDE for a few weeks and have been missing markdown preview that supports Mermaid diagrams.

I was particularly please to see that mdserve is a cross-platform binary with zero dependencies. Meaning: brew install mdserve will install it without me also having to install Python or Node.js or Go or Rust or…anything!

It’s a no-brainer to use:

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bitsbyme@bitsby % mdserve
error: the following required arguments were not provided:
  <FILE>

Usage: mdserve <FILE>

For more information, try '--help'.
bitsbyme@bitsby % mdserve README.md
📄 Serving markdown file: /Users/bitsbyme/projects/agent-learn/6-planning/README.md
🌐 Server running at: http://localhost:3000
📝 Raw markdown at: http://localhost:3000/raw
⚡ Live reload enabled - file changes will update content instantly

Press Ctrl+C to stop the server

Crack open the URL in your browser and enjoy a live updating preview of markdown that includes Mermaid diagrams.

Previewing Markdown Files with mdserve

There’s a little theme picker in the preview web page so you can pick your light or dark theme:

Theme Picker

See Also