Lightweight markdown companion for Culmen study notes — and for anyone writing math-heavy markdown in VS Code.
Slab adds a themed external preview and small authoring helpers around VS Code's native markdown support. It deliberately does not replace anything VS Code already does well (preview rendering, KaTeX math in the built-in preview, image paste).
Features
External popout preview — Slab: Open Preview renders the active markdown file with MathJax in your browser, on a second screen if you like. It live-updates as you type and follows the active Slab theme.
Themes — one preset recolors both the LaTeX highlighting in the editor and the popout preview. Switch from the Slab sidebar.
LaTeX authoring — completions for environments, commands, Greek letters, and symbols; math token highlighting; insert commands for inline/display math, equation, and align.
Table editing — Tab/Shift+Tab move between cells and keep the pipe table aligned; commands to format and to insert/delete rows and columns. Rendering stays native.
Asset paths — image link completion from the assets/ folder next to your note, and a one-click setting so pasted images land in assets/ (Culmen's workspace layout).
Commands
Command
What it does
Slab: Open Preview
Open the themed external browser preview
Slab: Format Table
Re-align the pipe table under the cursor
Slab: Table Next/Previous Cell
Move between table cells (bound to Tab/Shift+Tab inside tables)
Slab: Table Insert Row Below / Delete Row
Row operations
Slab: Table Insert Column Right / Delete Column
Column operations
Slab: Insert Inline/Display Math, Equation, Align
Math snippets
Slab: Use Culmen Asset Layout
Point markdown.copyFiles.destination at assets/
Settings
slab.activeTheme — current theme preset
slab.showStatusBarEntry — toggle the status bar entry
slab.latexColors.* — individual LaTeX token colors (written by theme presets)
Development
npm run smoke — run all smoke tests
F5 in VS Code — launch the Extension Development Host
npm run release:check — full release gate (tests, packaging, VSIX contents)
