Coming in Elide 1.6.3. Open a .md or .markdown file with Elide to read it as a formatted terminal document.
Use it for a repository’s README, an operational runbook over SSH, or development notes without leaving the shell.
No Elide project is required.
Read a README or runbook
elide README.md
elide docs/runbook.md
elide run notes.markdown
Headings establish a visual hierarchy; lists, quotes, tables, and code panels make longer documents easier to scan. Prose wraps to the terminal width, and fenced code blocks receive syntax highlighting for recognized languages. Code blocks are displayed, not executed.
CommonMark syntax is supported along with GitHub-style tables, strikethrough, and task lists. For example,
save this as runbook.md:
# Check the service
- [x] Generate configuration
- [ ] Verify the health endpoint
```shell
curl http://localhost:8080/health
```
| Response | Next step |
| --- | --- |
| 200 | Continue deployment |
| 503 | Check application logs |
Then run elide runbook.md. Links retain their destinations, and raw HTML is displayed as text.
Page through a long document
Elide prints the rendered document to stdout. Pipe it to a pager such as less when you want to scroll:
elide docs/runbook.md | less
Piped output is plain by default. To retain terminal colors with a pager that understands ANSI escapes:
elide --color docs/runbook.md | less -R
--no-color and the NO_COLOR environment variable take precedence over forced color. If NO_COLOR is set,
remove it from the environment before using the color example.
Save a readable text copy
Disable colors explicitly when saving rendered notes for a log or an artifact:
elide --no-color notes.markdown > notes.txt
This writes the terminal rendering, including its layout, rather than converting Markdown to another document format.
The source file remains unchanged. --quiet also preserves the rendered output.
--format is for Pkl and PCF output and is rejected for Markdown files.
Document rendering also rejects --sandbox and --limit. See the CLI reference for command options.