ghmd

ghmd (GitHub Markdown) is an extremely light-weight and simple command line tool to convert GitHub Flavored Markdown (or plain Markdown) to HTML.

It does so by using the GitHub Markdown API in combination with GitHub Markdown CSS.

It has two available implementations:

• Python
• Node.js

Installation

# Node.js
npm install -g ghmd-js

or

# Python
pip install ghmd

Usage

Simply run ghmd with the path to the markdown file(s) you want to convert. An HTML file will be created in the same directory as the markdown file with the same filename.

ghmd README.md
# or
ghmd README.md CONTRIBUTING.md

[!NOTE] If you don't have the ghmd command available after installing, you may need to add the Python scripts directory to your PATH environment variable.

Otherwise you, can use python -m ghmd instead of ghmd.

Options

GitHub API Token

By default, ghmd uses unauthenticated requests to the GitHub API, which has a rate limit of 60 requests per hour. To increase this limit to 5000 requests per hour, you can set the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable with a GitHub personal access token:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=your_github_token_here
ghmd README.md

To create a personal access token, visit your GitHub Settings > Developer Settings > Personal access tokens and create a new token (no specific scopes are required).

--embed-css

By default, ghmd will add the remote CSS as a <link> tag in the HTML file. If you want to embed the CSS directly into the HTML file so that, for example, you can send the HTML file to someone else and they can view it without an internet connection, you can use the --embed-css option.

ghmd README.md --embed-css

--light and --dark

The default CSS styles adapt to the system's dark mode setting of the reader. If you want to force the CSS to be light or dark, you can use the --light or --dark options.

ghmd README.md --light
# or
ghmd README.md --dark

Both --light and --dark can be used in combination with --embed-css.

[!NOTE] Using the --embed-css option will result in a ~25 KB larger HTML file size (~18 KB when using --light or --dark).

--no-gfm

The tool offers two modes: GitHub Flavored Markdown (gfm, default) and plain Markdown. To use the latter, the --no-gfm option can be used:

ghmd README.md --no-gfm