| name | markdown-rendering |
| description | Renders markdown to self-contained HTML with a custom dark stylesheet and opens in browser. Use when previewing markdown documents, generating styled HTML from README or report files. |
| keywords | ["markdown","html","render","preview","pandoc","browser","document"] |
| related | ["bash"] |
Markdown Rendering
Convert any markdown file to a styled, self-contained HTML document and open it in the default browser.
Quick render (existing file)
nix run nixpkgs#pandoc -- \
--from=markdown-implicit_figures --to=html --embed-resources --standalone \
--css="$HOME/.pi/agent/skills/knowledge/markdown-rendering/assets/style.css" \
input.md -o output.html && xdg-open output.html
Quick render (piped stdin — no temp file)
Pandoc accepts - as the input filename to read from stdin. Use this when generating markdown on the fly:
echo '# Hello World' | nix run nixpkgs#pandoc -- \
--from=markdown-implicit_figures --to=html --embed-resources --standalone \
--css="$HOME/.pi/agent/skills/knowledge/markdown-rendering/assets/style.css" \
- -o output.html && xdg-open output.html
Stylesheet
The stylesheet lives at assets/style.css and is derived from ~/.nix/modules/nixos/defaults/colors.nix (base16 palette). It provides:
- Dark background (
#191033) with light text (#f8f8f8)
- Yellow accents on headings (
#fad000)
- Cyan links (
#80fcff) and green code strings (#a5ff90)
- Styled tables, blockquotes, code blocks, and horizontal rules
Constraints
- Always use
nix run nixpkgs#pandoc — do not assume pandoc is on PATH
- Always pass
--embed-resources --standalone so the HTML is fully portable (no external CSS/JS dependencies)
- Always pass
--css=<path> pointing to assets/style.css for consistent styling
- Always open with
xdg-open after rendering — the user expects to see the result
- Pipe generated markdown via stdin (
-) instead of writing a temp file — pandoc reads stdin natively
