Work with AI agents on Markdown like a Google Doc

Booting up a resource-heavy IDE just to read a few Markdown files is overkill. Traditional IDEs were built for manual coding, a job now largely handled by AI agents. Today, what you really need is a streamlined "human layer" to easily review agent-written specs and plans.

Markside delivers a lightweight, pleasant reading & editing experience, along with inline comments and quick sharing features that IDEs lack. If you’re an AI-native developer who only keeps an IDE around to open a handful of files, Markside lets you ditch the bloat and keep your workflow seamlessly between your agent and your browser.

While Obsidian is a powerhouse for building a "second brain," its architecture creates unnecessary friction for reviewing markdown files: Obsidian relies on a closed "vault" system, you can’t just open a standalone Markdown file in a random project folder without turning your entire codebase into a vault. Furthermore, loading a heavy desktop app built to index thousands of notes is overkill for a quick, ephemeral read, and it lacks built-in tools for inline comments and sharing.

Markside bypasses all of this. It operates seamlessly in your browser with zero setup, allowing you to instantly view, comment on, and share any local Markdown file without the vault or desktop app overhead.

Platforms like GitHub and BitBucket are excellent for rendering Markdown in a remote repository and collaborating with human teammates through Pull Requests. However, the AI-driven workflow requires rapid, local collaboration with your agent long before anything is pushed to a remote repo. Forcing agent-generated drafts into a Git workflow means staging, committing, and pushing every half-baked iteration just to read it comfortably.

Markside bridges this gap by letting you instantly view, comment on, and share local Markdown files directly in your browser. It’s built specifically for that high-speed, local feedback loop with your agent, keeping your commit history clean until the work is actually done.

cat, bat, and vim just print the raw Markdown — you're reading ##, [ ], and |table|syntax| instead of an actual document.

Glow renders Markdown in the terminal, but navigating a long doc is clunky and editing means dropping into vim.

Grip renders Markdown in the browser, but it spins up a local server and sends your file contents to the GitHub API — you can get rate limited, and you need to provide GitHub credentials.

Markside gives you a real rendered view with inline comments and in-place editing, entirely local and without leaving the browser you're already working in.

That toggle is what lets Markside extention access local Markdown files and render them. It does not grant Markside any access beyond that. Nothing about the permission sends data anywhere; everything still runs locally.

Everyday file use stays on your machine. Markside has no analytics or telemetry, and file contents, paths, and folder handles stay local. If you explicitly create a Hosted Snapshot, Markside encrypts the saved copy in your browser and uploads ciphertext for the recipient. The decryption key stays in the link fragment, not on Markside's servers.

You can choose a Link Snapshot or a Hosted Snapshot. A Link Snapshot compresses the Markdown into the URL, and your teammate's browser decodes it locally. A Hosted Snapshot makes a shorter link by encrypting the document in your browser before upload. Markside stores ciphertext only, and the key stays in the URL fragment so is not sent to Markside server. Hosted Snapshots expire after 7, 30, or 90 days.

Any agent that writes a file works: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, OpenClaw, Kilo, Hermes, Pi, and more. Markside works with the file itself, not a specific tool, so switching agents does not break your review flow.

Not yet — Markside is a Chrome/Chromium extension only.

Yes. Markside is completely free, with no account, no trial limits, no paywall.