A markdown-first browser built with Electron and Bun, md-browse presents web content in a clean, AI-friendly markdown format. It targets developers, researchers, and power users seeking to process or view web data efficiently. By prioritizing native markdown and intelligently converting HTML, it offers a streamlined alternative to traditional browsers, focusing on content relevance and readability.

How It Works

The core mechanism involves sending Accept: text/markdown headers with HTTP requests to retrieve native markdown content when available, such as from Vercel's documentation. For standard HTML pages, md-browse employs the Turndown library, configured with specific settings to strip non-essential elements like scripts and styles, extract primary content from semantic tags (<main>, <article>), and convert remaining markup into clean markdown. This process aims to replicate the content extraction fidelity observed in AI models like Copilot and Claude, focusing on main article content rather than boilerplate.

Quick Start & Requirements

• Installation: Install dependencies using bun install.
• Development: Run in development mode with bun run start.
• Build: Build for the current platform with bun run build, or for Windows x64 with bun run build:stable:win.
• Prerequisites: Bun runtime is required. macOS is specified for native app development. No external datasets or API keys are mentioned.

Highlighted Details

• Markdown-First Fetching: Prioritizes text/markdown content from servers that support it.
• AI-Tuned HTML Conversion: Leverages Turndown to generate clean, readable markdown from HTML, aiming for parity with AI parsing.
• Dual View Mode: Seamlessly toggles between raw markdown source and a rendered preview.
• Tabbed Interface: Supports multiple tabs with full navigation history (back/forward/reload).
• Clean Design: Features a dark, modern UI focused on readability.

Maintenance & Community

No specific details on contributors, sponsorships, or community channels (e.g., Discord, Slack) were provided in the README snippet.

Licensing & Compatibility

No license information was specified in the README snippet. This absence requires clarification for commercial use or integration.

Limitations & Caveats

The README indicates macOS is the primary environment for native app development, suggesting potential complexities or lack of official support for building on other operating systems. The effectiveness of the "AI-like" HTML conversion is subjective and may vary based on the source website's structure and complexity.