MDDock vs glow
glow made terminal Markdown beautiful — and read-only. If you live in the terminal and want to write, search and AI-query your notes without leaving it, that difference is everything.
Where glow shines
- Rendering polish. glow's Glamour engine set the bar for pretty Markdown in a terminal — styles, wrapping and tables look great.
- Zero friction to peek. Point it at a README and you get an instant, styled view — perfect for a quick look.
- Charm ecosystem. It fits neatly into the Charm toolchain many CLI users already have.
Where MDDock is different
- Read AND write. glow shells out to $EDITOR to change anything; MDDock has a full vim-style editor with autosave, undo, tabs and mouse support built in.
- Live split preview. Type on the left, watch it render on the right — glow has no editing surface at all.
- AI semantic search. Ask your vault questions in natural language and get citable answers; glow's search stops at filenames and stash.
- An MCP server, so AI agents work in the same vault. Claude Code and friends can search, read and write your notes directly.
Which one should you choose?
Choose glow if you only need to view Markdown in the terminal — quick README previews, styled dumps, nothing more.
Choose MDDock if the terminal is where you actually work: editing notes, searching across files, managing SKILL.md / CLAUDE.md for your AI agents, or running a vault over SSH.
Frequently asked questions
Can glow edit Markdown files?+
No. glow is a renderer and stash viewer; pressing `e` opens an external editor. MDDock edits in place with a vim-style modal editor.
Does MDDock render as nicely as glow?+
Yes — styled headings, tables, code highlighting, four built-in themes, plus Mermaid diagrams rendered as structured arrow lists. And the same rendering is live while you type.
Which is better for managing AI agent config files (SKILL.md, CLAUDE.md)?+
MDDock. It was built for the AI-coding workflow: full-text and semantic search across all your agent files, an MCP server so agents read the same notes, and tabs for juggling several configs at once.
Do both work over SSH?+
Both run in any terminal, SSH included. The difference shows up once you're there: with glow you still need a second tool to edit; with MDDock the whole workflow stays in one session.
One free download gives you the desktop app and the terminal TUI — same vault, same AI memory.