kaku

kaku is a fast, minimal Markdown reader for terminals.

It is built as a small Rust workspace with three clean layers:

• kaku-core parses Markdown into a document model.
• kaku-render turns the document model into ANSI layout lines.
• kaku provides the CLI, pager loop, search, and watch mode.

Philosophy

• Read one document well
• Stay local and terminal-native
• Use a centered reading column on wide terminals
• Prefer calm output over decorative styling
• Keep the command surface small

Features

• Full-screen pager for local files and stdin
• Plain stdout output with -p
• Unicode-aware wrapping for CJK and emoji-heavy text
• Headings, lists, tables, blockquotes, task lists, links, and code blocks
• Search, TOC panel, file watching, and stdin support
• Optional syntax highlighting for source builds with --features syntax

Usage

kaku README.md
kaku -
cat README.md | kaku
kaku -p README.md
kaku -w README.md
kaku -t README.md

Pager Keys

• j / Down: scroll down
• k / Up: scroll up
• PgDn / Space: page down
• PgUp: page up
• g / G: top / bottom
• /: search
• n / N: next / previous match
• t: toggle TOC panel
• Enter: jump to the selected TOC entry
• o: open the first link near the current viewport
• r: reload
• ?: show a short key hint
• q: quit

Packaging

The workspace ships with cargo-dist metadata for GitHub Releases, Homebrew, and npm. See docs/RELEASING.md for the current release flow.