prettier-plugin-compact-markdown-table

Prettier plugin for compact markdown tables without cell padding or alignment

Resolves prettier/prettier#12074, prettier/prettier#14722, prettier/prettier#16954.

Features

• Compact tables: Strip all whitespace padding or alignment and reduce separators for table cells.
• Save LLM tokens: A 5-column, 10-row table saves ~21% of table tokens and ~32% of characters with compact formatting.
• Fit character limits: Useful for submissions with strict character budgets, e.g., OpenReview rebuttals capped at 5000 characters.

Prerequisites

• Prettier >= 3.0.0

Get Started

Install the plugin alongside Prettier:

# npm
npm install -D prettier-plugin-compact-markdown-table

# pnpm
pnpm add -D prettier-plugin-compact-markdown-table

Add the plugin to your .prettierrc:

{
  "plugins": ["prettier-plugin-compact-markdown-table"]
}

Then format as usual:

prettier --write "**/*.md"

Before:

| Name  | Age | City |
| ----- | --- | ---- |
| Alice | 30  | NYC  |
| Bob   | 25  | LA   |

After:

|Name|Age|City|
|-|-|-|
|Alice|30|NYC|
|Bob|25|LA|

Config

tableLayout

|Value|Description| |-|-| |"compact" (default)|No cell padding, minimal separators.| |"aligned"|Pad cells to align columns (Prettier default).|

Set in .prettierrc:

{
  "tableLayout": "compact"
}

Or pass via CLI:

prettier --table-layout aligned --write "**/*.md"

Licenses

Copyright (C) 2026 Yulong Ming [email protected]

Apache License, Version 2.0