herald-md

Render Markdown to the terminal with herald's full theming and composability.

When to use | Installation | Quick Start | Elements | Theming | Extensions | Composing | Examples

herald-md parses Markdown with goldmark (CommonMark + GFM) and renders it to the terminal through herald's typography system - themed headings, styled code blocks, tables, alerts, and more, all controlled by a single Typography instance.

When to use herald-md

glamour is an excellent library for rendering Markdown in the terminal.

herald-md takes a different approach. Paired with herald, it gives you a full typography layer where Markdown is one input format among many. Use it when:

• You want one theme for your entire CLI or TUI - pick a built-in theme (Dracula, Catppuccin, Base16, Charm) or define your own, and both Markdown and programmatic output use it automatically - no separate style configuration needed.
• You need fine-grained customization - functional options and ColorPalette give you full control over every element.
• You are mixing Markdown with programmatic elements - Render returns a plain string you can pass directly to herald's Compose alongside other herald calls.

Installation

Requires Go 1.25+.

go get github.com/indaco/herald-md@latest

Quick Start

Note

The Go module path is github.com/indaco/herald-md but the package name is heraldmd. Use an import alias: heraldmd "github.com/indaco/herald-md".

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"

    "github.com/indaco/herald"
    heraldmd "github.com/indaco/herald-md"
)

func main() {
    source, _ := os.ReadFile("doc.md")
    ty := herald.New()
    fmt.Println(heraldmd.Render(ty, source))
}

Supported elements

Element	Markdown syntax	Herald method
Headings H1–H6	# H1 … ###### H6	H1() – H6()
Paragraph	plain text	P()
Blockquote	> text	Blockquote()
Fenced code block	```lang	CodeBlock(code, lang)
Indented code block	4-space indent	CodeBlock(code)
Horizontal rule	---	HR()
Unordered list	- item	UL() / NestUL()
Ordered list	1. item	OL() / NestOL()
Bold	**text**	Bold()
Italic	*text*	Italic()
Strikethrough	~~text~~	Strikethrough()
Inline code	`code`	Code()
Link	[label](url)	Link(label, url)
Autolink	<https://...>	Link(url)
Image		Link(alt, url) (terminals cannot render images)
GFM table	pipe table syntax	Table() / TableWithOpts()
GitHub alert	> [!NOTE] etc.	Alert() / Note() / Tip() etc.
Definition list *	Term + : desc	DL()
Footnote ref *	[^1]	FootnoteRef()
Footnote section *	[^1]: text	FootnoteSection()
Inline quotation	<q>text</q>	Q()
Citation	<cite>text</cite>	Cite()
Sample output	<samp>text</samp>	Samp()
Variable	<var>text</var>	Var()
Keyboard key	<kbd>text</kbd>	Kbd()
Highlight	<mark>text</mark>	Mark()
Inserted text	<ins>text</ins>	Ins()
Deleted text	<del>text</del>	Del()
Subscript	<sub>text</sub>	Sub()
Superscript	<sup>text</sup>	Sup()
Abbreviation	<abbr>text</abbr>	Abbr()
Underline	<u>text</u>	Underline()
Small text	<small>text</small>	Small()

Elements marked with * require enabling the corresponding goldmark extension via NewRenderer. All other elements work out of the box with the default GFM configuration.

• Inline HTML tags (<q>, <cite>, <samp>, <var>, <kbd>, <mark>, <ins>, <del>, <sub>, <sup>, <abbr>, <u>, <small>, <b>, <i>, <s>, <em>, <strong>, <code>) are mapped to the corresponding herald method. Unknown HTML tags pass through as raw text.
• Nested lists are automatically rendered with NestUL/NestOL when sub-lists are detected, falling back to flat UL/OL for simple lists.
• Column alignment specified in GFM tables (:-, :-:, -:) is preserved via WithColumnAlign.

Theming

Pass any herald theme to herald.New() and all Markdown output will use it:

ty := herald.New(herald.WithTheme(herald.DraculaTheme()))
fmt.Println(heraldmd.Render(ty, source))

Custom ColorPalette values and individual With* options work the same way - configure the Typography instance once and Render inherits everything.

Custom goldmark extensions

Use NewRenderer to add goldmark extensions beyond the default GFM set:

r := heraldmd.NewRenderer(
    goldmark.WithExtensions(extension.Footnote),
)
fmt.Println(r.Render(ty, source))

The package-level Render function uses a default renderer with GFM enabled.

Composing with herald

Because Render returns a string, it composes directly with other herald output via ty.Compose:

ty := herald.New()

page := ty.Compose(
    ty.H1("My App"),
    heraldmd.Render(ty, readmeBytes), // readmeBytes loaded via os.ReadFile(...)
    ty.HR(),
    ty.KVGroup([][2]string{
        {"Version", "1.0.0"},
        {"License", "MIT"},
    }),
)

fmt.Println(page)

Examples

Runnable examples are in the examples/ directory:

Core (0xx)

Example	Description	Run
000_render-file	Render a Markdown file with the default theme; accepts any .md as argument	go run ./examples/000_render-file/

Extensions (1xx)

Examples in this range are separate Go modules with their own go.mod to keep extra dependencies out of herald-md's core. Run them with cd into the example directory first.

Example	Description	Run
100_definition-list	Custom goldmark extension: definition lists rendered as herald DL	cd examples/100_definition-list && go run .

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.