MDotion

Read and edit every Markdown file like a Notion page, right inside VS Code and Cursor.

AI agents now write Markdown into our projects all day: plans, specs, docs, notes. Reading and editing those files shouldn't be a chore. MDotion opens any .md file in the Notion-style editor we all love, with slash menu, draggable blocks, callouts, to-dos and tables.

Files stay portable Markdown on disk — no account, no cloud, no proprietary format — and the blocks you don't touch are written back byte for byte, so Git diffs stay clean.

Preview — MDotion is young (0.x). Your files are always plain Markdown and the source editor is one click away, but please report anything that looks wrong.

Features

• Notion UI — centered page, the first # H1 as page title, Notion typography and colours, light / dark theme switch (sun / moon button; Auto follows the IDE), full-width, small-text, serif and mono page options (•••).
• Slash menu (/) — text, headings, bulleted / numbered / to-do lists, quote, callout, code, divider, table, image, with search and keyboard navigation.
• Block handles — hover a block for + (add below, ⌥-click above) and ⋮⋮ (drag to move, click for Turn into / Duplicate / Move / Copy as Markdown / Delete).
• Block selection — drag across blocks or from the margin, Esc, Shift+↑/↓, ⌘A twice; selected blocks can be copied, deleted, duplicated, moved or converted together.
• Selection toolbar — Turn into, bold, italic, strikethrough, code, link (⌘K).
• Markdown shortcuts — # , - , 1. , [] , > , ```, ---, plus ⌘B/I/E, ⌘⇧S, ⌘⌥1–3, ⌘⇧7/8/9, ⌘↵ (toggle to-do), ⌘D (duplicate), ⌘⇧↑/↓ (move block, or the row in a table), ⌘⇧O (go to heading), Tab / ⇧Tab (indent).
• Callouts stored as GitHub alerts (> [!NOTE], TIP, IMPORTANT, WARNING, CAUTION).
• Tables, fast — paste a range from Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets (or a table from a web page) and get a clean GFM table; grips to reorder rows and columns, + bars to add several at once, column alignment, resizable columns, Enter to go down a row like in a spreadsheet.
• Outline — a side panel with the headings of the page: jump to a section, drag a whole section (content and subsections) to reorder the document, fold sections while you work, spot duplicate titles and skipped levels; ⌘⇧O searches the headings.
• Code blocks with language picker, syntax highlighting and copy button; images with relative paths and captions (alt text).
• Front matter shown as page properties and edited as YAML.
• Nothing is lost — HTML, reference definitions, badges and anything the editor cannot represent are kept verbatim as source blocks, with a sanitized preview.
• Copy as Markdown — anything you copy pastes as formatted Markdown elsewhere; pasting Markdown creates blocks.
• Switch & copy — Visual | Markdown toggle (⌘⌥M / Ctrl+Alt+M) replaces the tab in place; Copy (⌘⇧⌥C / Ctrl+Shift+Alt+C) copies the whole file. (On editors older than VS Code 1.100 a file with unsaved changes opens in a second tab instead, so nothing is discarded.)
• Real files — edits go through the IDE TextDocument: save, dirty state, undo in the source editor and Git work as usual; external changes appear live without moving the caret; conflicts never overwrite silently.

Installation

• VS Code: install MDotion from the Visual Studio Marketplace, or run ext install MDotion.mdotion-editor in Quick Open.
• Cursor, VSCodium and other editors using Open VSX: install it from Open VSX.
• From source: npm install && npm run package, then Extensions → ⋯ → Install from VSIX… (requires Node.js 20.11+).

Requires VS Code 1.85 or later (or an editor built on it).

Getting started

MDotion never takes over your Markdown files on its own:

• open any .md file and click the book icon in the editor title bar, the MDotion status bar item, or press ⌘⌥M / Ctrl+Alt+M;
• the first time you open a Markdown file, MDotion asks whether it should become your default Markdown editor. You can change this at any time with MDotion: Use as Default Markdown Editor / MDotion: Stop Using as Default Markdown Editor.

Slash menu (dark theme)	Block selection

Commands

Also available from the editor title bar, the status bar, the explorer context menu and Reopen Editor With…. Shortcuts can be changed in Keyboard Shortcuts.

Settings

Supported Markdown

CommonMark + GFM (tables, task lists, strikethrough, autolinks) and GitHub alerts are editable visually; everything else is preserved verbatim. Column widths and folded sections are kept by the editor, not in the file. Details in ADR-008.

Privacy

MDotion runs entirely inside your editor. It collects no telemetry, makes no network requests of its own and never uploads your files. Remote images referenced by your Markdown are loaded by the editor preview like in any Markdown viewer, and links are opened only when you click them.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — bug reports, ideas and pull requests. Read CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup, tests and conventions, and follow the Code of Conduct. Please report security issues privately as described in SECURITY.md.

Architecture notes and design decisions live in docs/adr.

License

MDotion is released under the MIT License. It bundles open-source packages (Tiptap, ProseMirror, React, highlight.js, marked, zod and others) whose licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

The MIT License covers the source code. The MDotion name and logo (including the images in images/) identify the project: you may use them to refer to MDotion, but not to brand forks or other products as if they were MDotion.

MDotion is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Notion Labs, Inc. "Notion" is a trademark of its respective owner and is used here only to describe the editing style.