The world is full of markdown editors. So why did we build another one?
The honest answer is that we didn't set out to build an editor. We set out to fix something specific about how markdown tooling works, and an editor was part of what we ended up making.
The Fragmentation Problem
If you write a lot of markdown, you probably have a collection of tools you use for different things. An editor here, a converter there, a table generator you found on GitHub, a README template you copy-paste from an old repo.
Each of these exists in isolation. When you want to write a README, convert it to HTML to preview how it'll look on a documentation site, and also need a formatted table in the middle of it, you're context-switching between three or four different tools with three or four different interfaces.
That's not a huge problem. But it's friction that adds up.
What Existing Tools Get Wrong
Markdown editors split into two groups.
The first group is too simple: a text area, maybe with a preview button. These are fine for quick edits but don't help you with the surrounding tasks. You still need to go somewhere else to generate a table or produce a PDF.
The second group is too complex: full-featured writing environments with accounts, cloud sync, collaboration features, plugin ecosystems, and monthly subscription fees. These are good products, but they're solving a different problem. If you just need to convert some markdown to HTML right now, you don't want to sign up for anything.
There's a gap in the middle. Fast, capable tools that don't require an account, don't upload your data, and cover the full range of what you actually need to do with markdown.
The Decisions That Shaped md0
Everything runs in the browser. This was a deliberate choice, not just a technical convenience. When your content never leaves your device, you don't have to think about what you're pasting into the tool. Internal docs, client work, draft posts with unreleased announcements. All of it stays on your machine.
No accounts for the tools. Every conversion tool on md0 works without signing in. You open the page, use the tool, close the page. No email required, no trial period.
A real set of tools, not a minimal product. md0 launched with 17 tools covering editors, converters, generators, and formatters. The goal was to cover enough of the markdown workflow that you wouldn't need to go elsewhere for the common cases.
The table generator specifically. Markdown table syntax is one of the most complained-about parts of writing markdown. It's not hard, but it's tedious, and doing it by hand for a ten-row table is a waste of time. A visual editor that produces correct syntax solves this problem completely.
What We're Building Next
The tools are the public-facing part of md0. The other part is the md0 CMS, which is built on the same philosophy: markdown-first, with GitHub as the storage layer.
The CMS is for teams and developers who want to manage content in markdown, store it in a Git repo they own, and edit it through a decent interface. No hosted database, no vendor lock-in, no data you don't control.
The tools and the CMS are connected by the same underlying idea: markdown is the right format for a lot of writing, and the tooling around it should be better than it currently is.
Start Using the Tools
If you've ended up here because you need something specific, the fastest thing is to just try it:
- Live editor for writing markdown with real-time preview
- Table generator for building tables without writing syntax
- Markdown to HTML converter for one-off conversions
- README generator for GitHub project documentation
- All tools if you want to see everything
Everything is free and works without an account.