Wardley Maps for Markdown
Renders Wardley maps written in the OnlineWardleyMaps (OWM) text format directly inside the VS Code Markdown preview, from an ```owm (or ```wardley) fenced code block.
This is a different extension from damonsk.vscode-wardley-maps, the established .owm/.wm file editor with SVG/PNG export and publish-to-onlinewardleymaps.com support. The two are complementary and safe to install together: this extension never claims the .owm or .wm file extension, and only activates on Markdown fences. Use damonsk.vscode-wardley-maps to author and export standalone map files; use this extension to see a map render inline wherever it's embedded in prose — a strategy doc, a research report, a vault note.
Usage
Fence a map with owm or wardley and preview the Markdown document as usual (Cmd+Shift+V / Ctrl+Shift+V):
```owm
title Tea Shop
anchor Business [0.95, 0.63]
component Cup of Tea [0.79, 0.61]
Business->Cup of Tea
```
That fence renders inline, in place, as an SVG:
Any other fence info (```js, ```yaml, etc.) is untouched and falls through to markdown-it's default renderer.
An optional YAML-style header before the map body sets render options:
```owm
---
theme: dark
width: 900
---
title Tea Shop
anchor Business [0.95, 0.63]
component Cup of Tea [0.79, 0.61]
Business->Cup of Tea
```
| Key |
Values |
Default |
theme |
plain, handwritten, wardley, dark, colour |
auto — dark under a dark VS Code theme, plain otherwise |
width |
integer px |
renderer default |
height |
integer px |
renderer default |
An unknown key is reported as a diagnostic on the host document; the map still renders.
Map syntax
The renderer supports the OWM DSL: title, anchor/component with [visibility, maturity] coordinates and optional label [x, y] offsets, build/buy/outsource/(market)/(ecosystem)/inertia decorators, evolve (with an optional -> rename and target maturity), pipeline in both header form (pipeline Name [maturity]) and block form (pipeline Name { component ... }), submap with a url, note, annotation/annotations, custom x-axis labels (evolution A->B->C->D), pioneers/settlers/townplanners attitude boxes, accelerator/deaccelerator, size, style, and both // and /* */ comments.
Coordinates are visibility first, maturity second. In component Cup of Tea [0.79, 0.61], 0.79 is visibility (the vertical value-chain axis) and 0.61 is maturity (the horizontal evolution axis).
market and ecosystem work as the decorator forms (market) and (ecosystem) on a component line. The standalone statement forms (market Users [0.5, 0.5]) are not: the OWM parser reports the line as a parse error and it contributes nothing to the map.
examples/fidelity-corpus.md in this repo has one worked fence per construct, useful as a reference or a copy-paste starting point.
Diagnostics report on the host document's real line numbers: parse errors from the OWM parser as errors, our own checks (out-of-range or non-numeric coordinates, a link or evolve referencing an undeclared component, duplicate component names) as warnings, and unknown config-header keys as informational.
Known limitation: y-axis
Custom y-axis labels (y-axis Profit|Low|High) are recognized and syntax-highlighted but not rendered — the underlying renderer has no support for relabeling the vertical axis, so a map using this line renders with the default "Value Chain" caption instead. A fence containing y-axis gets an informational diagnostic noting this. Every other construct listed above, including block-form pipelines and the attitude boxes, renders correctly.
