MyMarkdown for VS Code

Make Markdown easier to scan without leaving the editor. MyMarkdown adds colourful headings, readable JSON, Mermaid diagrams, callouts, highlights, footnotes, linting, and a clickable Contents view to VS Code's own Markdown preview.

Private by design: no account, no network requests, and nothing leaves your computer.

What you get

A clearer preview

Open any .md file and press Ctrl+Shift+V or Cmd+Shift+V. MyMarkdown styles the preview you already know, so scroll sync, links, images, search, and click-to-source keep working.

• Distinct colours for H1, H2, and H3
• Responsive tables and code blocks
• Mermaid diagrams that follow your light or dark theme
• Task lists with clear checked and unchecked states
• GitHub callouts, highlights, strikethrough, math, and footnotes

JSON that is easy to read

JSON is formatted one field per line and coloured by type. Long values wrap inside the preview, and \n inside strings becomes a visible line break. Bare and inline JSON are recognized too.

Beautify with one command

Run MyMarkdown: Beautify Markdown, click the sparkle button, or press Ctrl+Alt+B / Cmd+Alt+B.

Beautify tidies spacing, normalizes bullets, and formats JSON as one undoable edit. It preserves your cursor and scroll position, and leaves YAML front matter, HTML, indented code, and precision-sensitive numbers untouched.

Contents and linting

The MyMarkdown activity-bar view lists H1, H2, and H3 headings. Select one to jump to it. Heading jumps, unclosed fences, invalid JSON, and mixed bullet styles appear in the Problems panel as you type.

Labels

Long documents hide their own shape. Ask MyMarkdown to label one and it draws coloured bars down the edge of the preview, each marking a stretch of the document and naming what it is about. A chip row above the preview lists the labels in the active lens; click a chip, or the matching bar, to jump to the next place that label appears. When a document has several lenses, use the dropdown chip at the start of the row to switch between them.

Run MyMarkdown: Suggest Label Lenses for three questions worth asking about the open document, or MyMarkdown: Label Document… to ask your own. Each answer is a lens, and a document can keep several — one showing how the content breaks down, another showing which parts still need work. Click the MyMarkdown item in the status bar (or run MyMarkdown: Switch Label Lens) to switch between lenses, hide labels for the open document, delete a lens you no longer want, or turn labels off everywhere with one click. MyMarkdown: Remove Label Lens and MyMarkdown: Toggle Labels do the same two things directly, for a keybinding or the Command Palette.

The chip row inside the preview is read-only: VS Code's built-in preview gives a contributed script no way to write back to the editor, so deleting a lens or disabling the feature always goes through one of the commands above, never a click inside the preview itself. The dropdown lists "Delete a lens…" and "Disable labels completely" alongside the real lenses so both options are visible from there too, but picking either just shows a one-line reminder of the command to run and puts the dropdown back on the lens you were already viewing — the preview only ever displays, never acts.

Existing Markdown files are not labelled retroactively. Open any old .md file and run MyMarkdown: Suggest Label Lenses or MyMarkdown: Label Document… once; after that, its labels are saved and reopen with the document. New Markdown files work the same way: write the document, run one of the label commands when it is ready, then use the chip row in the preview. If labels do not generate, install a language model provider such as GitHub Copilot or set mymarkdown.labels.cliCommand to a local command that returns the expected JSON.

Labels use the AI you already have: a language model provider such as GitHub Copilot, or a command you point the extension at. No API key is stored or sent by this extension. Your Markdown stays local unless you explicitly generate AI labels, in which case the document is sent to your selected AI provider.

Labels are saved beside your workspace, so they are still there tomorrow. Each one remembers the text it covers, so editing elsewhere in the document leaves it on the right section, and a label whose text you delete quietly disappears.

Labels from your coding agent

Coding agents can label the Markdown they write, so the labels are there the first time you open a document. MyMarkdown ships a markdown-labels skill and a small hook for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot (CLI and VS Code agent mode), Cursor and Codex. When an agent saves a document of 400 or more words with at least two headings and no labels yet, the hook tells it to run the skill. The skill writes three lenses to .mymd/, the hook ties each label to its text so it survives later edits, and the open preview picks them up as soon as they are saved.

The hook and skill live in each project, so set them up once per project, either way:

• In VS Code, open the project and run MyMarkdown: Install Label Hooks for Coding Agents.
• From a terminal at the project root (or anywhere inside it, if it is a git repository), with no editor needed, run npx mymarkdown-hooks init.

Both add the same six files: the hook (.agents/hooks/markdown-labels.cjs), the skill (in .agents/skills/ and .claude/skills/), and one small config entry each for Claude Code and Cursor (.claude/settings.json), Copilot (.github/hooks/markdown-labels.json) and Codex (.codex/hooks.json). The command installs into the folder open in VS Code; npx installs at the top of the git repository you run it in. Labels show up when that folder is also the one you open in VS Code and start your agents from (Copilot CLI always reads the top of the git repository).

Nothing you already have is overwritten. The hook entry is merged into an existing .claude/settings.json or .codex/hooks.json, and a file that differs is only replaced if you confirm. After an update, run the command again and choose Replace, or run npx mymarkdown-hooks init --force; either replaces any edits you made to these files. You need Node.js on your PATH.

Then each agent may need one step of its own:

The hook and skill always use .mymd, whatever mymarkdown.labels.storagePath is set to.

Settings

mymarkdown.lint

Default: true

Reports Markdown structure problems in the Problems panel.

mymarkdown.registerFormatter

Default: false

Lets Format Document and editor.formatOnSave run Beautify. It stays off by default to avoid conflicting with Prettier or markdownlint. If you enable it, choose MyMarkdown for Markdown files:

"[markdown]": {
  "editor.defaultFormatter": "mymarkdown.mymarkdown",
  "editor.formatOnSave": true
}

mymarkdown.labels.enabled

Default: true

Draws label bars in the preview for documents that have them. Run MyMarkdown: Toggle Labels to flip it without opening Settings.

mymarkdown.labels.provider

Default: auto

Which AI to ask for labels: languageModel for a provider such as Copilot, cli for a command of your own, or auto for whichever is available.

mymarkdown.labels.cliCommand

Default: empty

The command to run when no language model provider is used. The request goes to its standard input and JSON is read back from its standard output:

"mymarkdown.labels.cliCommand": "claude -p"

mymarkdown.labels.storagePath

Default: .mymd

The folder holding label files, mirroring each document's path. Add it to .gitignore to keep labels to yourself, or commit it to share them with everyone on the project.

Settings apply immediately; no reload is needed.

Install and use

Install from the VS Code Marketplace, reload the window, open a Markdown file, and press Ctrl+Shift+V / Cmd+Shift+V.

For a local package:

code --install-extension vscode-extension/mymarkdown-0.1.22.vsix

Open source

Source, release notes, and contribution instructions are on GitHub. Ideas and bug reports are welcome in Issues.

License

MIT