Busymd: The minimalist Markdown viewer for busy terminals in Pure Bash

2 hours ago 2

A pure bash markdown viewer for the terminal. Zero dependencies. Works everywhere.

Inspired by bat, glow, and the Unix philosophy of doing one thing well.

Comparison: busymd vs cat\less

Left: busymd (pure bash, zero dependencies) | Right: cat/less

Left: busymd | Right: cat/less

Syntax highlighting — Headers, lists, code blocks, links, images, tables, and more
Pure bash — No Python, Ruby, Node.js, or Go. Just bash.
Zero dependencies — Works on busybox, Alpine, anywhere with bash
Portable — Drop it in as a shell function or standalone script
Minimal — Under 300 lines of code

View a markdown file:

Pipe from stdin:

cat README.md | busymd.sh echo "# Hello" | busymd.sh curl -s https://example.com/README.md | busymd.sh

Skip the pager (disable lazy loading):

busymd.sh --no-pager README.md

Headers (all 6 levels)
Bold, italic, bold+italic, strikethrough
inline code and fenced code blocks with syntax highlighting
Lists (ordered, unordered, nested, task lists)
Links and images
Tables
Blockquotes
Horizontal rules
Admonitions (!!! note, !!! warning, etc.)

Use as a bash function (recommended):

# Add to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc source /path/to/busymd.sh # Now you can use 'busymd' directly

Or as a one-liner function:

# Minimal wrapper - no sourcing needed busymd() { bash /path/to/busymd.sh "$@"; }

Install as a standalone command:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avilum/busymd/refs/heads/master/busymd.sh -o ~/.local/bin/busymd && chmod +x ~/.local/bin/busymd

Or just download and run:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avilum/busymd/refs/heads/master/busymd.sh chmod +x busymd.sh ./busymd.sh README.md

When using the pager (less), you can:

Key Action

g / G	Go to beginning / end
j / k	Scroll down / up
Space	Page down
/pattern	Search forward
n / N	Next / previous match
q	Quit

Sometimes all you need is to peek inside a README or markdown file — just to see how it actually renders, understand those code blocks, or check formatting without leaving your terminal.

I wanted something simple and lean for viewing Markdown — similar to how VSCode or GitHub render .md files, but right in the shell. No GUI, no browser, no fuss.

There are great tools out there like bat, glow, and mdcat, but they often come with heavier dependencies or larger codebases. busymd focuses on being minimal and fast — just pure bash, under 400 lines, and it works anywhere.

Use it as a standalone script, source it as a bash function, or copy/paste it wherever you need it.

busymd runs on:

Alpine Linux
Busybox
Docker containers
Old servers
Your laptop
Pretty much anywhere with bash 4.0+

# Quick preview of any GitHub repo's README curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sharkdp/bat/master/README.md | busymd.sh # Source it once in your shell, use it anywhere source ~/bin/busymd.sh busymd README.md cat CHANGELOG.md | busymd # Or with an alias for cleaner syntax source ~/bin/busymd.sh && alias md='busymd' md README.md # One-liner wrapper function busymd() { bash ~/bin/busymd.sh "$@"; } busymd CHANGELOG.md # Chain with other tools find . -name "*.md" -exec busymd.sh {} \;