glance
A terminal Markdown tool with two faces, over the same folder of .md files:
- For you — a beautifully rendered reader and a real editor: syntax-highlighted
code, aligned tables, inline images, vault navigation (
[[wikilinks]],
backlinks, a graph explorer), themes, search. Obsidian, in your shell.
- For your agent — an agent-native memory layer: token-cheap, structure-aware
reads, budget-bounded retrieval with a token receipt, an MCP server, and a
surgical write API. Your assistant reads and maintains your vault for a
fraction of the tokens — locally, with citations, no embeddings required.
$ glance README.md # open the reader (you)
$ glance --context "how do we deploy?" ./vault --budget 4000 # retrieve (your agent)
$ glance mcp # serve the vault to Claude Desktop / Cursor
Same files, same renderer, two consumers. The vault's own structure — headings
and the link graph — is the engine; nothing is a black box, nothing leaves your
machine.
User-side: the reader/editor
glance file.md # open in the reader TUI
glance new.md # a path that doesn't exist opens empty; :w creates it
glance-render -w 80 file.md # render to ANSI on stdout (-l for a light theme)
cat note.md | glance # read from stdin
glance --help # full usage and every key binding
glance renders Markdown with syntax-highlighted code blocks, column-aligned
tables, and inline images (pixel graphics where the terminal supports them).
Three modes: Reader (rendered, with a block cursor), Insert (full-screen
editor), Split (editor + live preview).
Keys
Reader
| Key | Action | Key | Action |
|---|
h j k l / arrows | move cursor | i | insert mode (full-screen editor) |
g / G | top / bottom | e | split: editor + live preview |
Ctrl-D / Ctrl-U | half page | v / V | select chars / lines |
/ n N | search, next, prev | y | yank selection → system clipboard |
Enter | follow link / [[wikilink]] | t | table of contents |
- / Ctrl-O | back to previous file | b | backlinks panel |
? | key legend (sidebar) | Ctrl-G | graph explorer |
T | theme picker (live) | Ctrl-S | save |
:w :wq :x :q :q! | write / quit (vi-style) | | |
Press ? to slide out a key legend on the right; the document reflows into
the space beside it. Trackpad / mouse-wheel scrolling works (the cursor rides
along), with a small reading-progress readout in the top-right corner.
Insert / Split — type to edit, Esc returns to the reader, Ctrl-S saves,
Ctrl-V pastes a clipboard image (saved in a <name>_media/ folder beside the
document). Brackets [ ( { auto-close; you type fences by hand. The editor
soft-wraps long lines to the pane width.
In the graph explorer (Ctrl-G) the current note sits in the centre, notes
that link to it on the left and notes it links to on the right; Space
re-centres to walk the vault.
Themes
Eight built-ins — auto (default; follows your terminal background), dracula,
nord, gruvbox-dark, solarized-dark, solarized-light, github-light. Pick
one with --theme, list them with --list-themes, or press T in the reader
for a live picker (the page recolors as you browse; Enter keeps and saves
it, Esc reverts). Set a default and define custom palettes in
~/.config/glance/config:
theme = nord
[theme:mine]
base = dracula
heading1 = #ff00aa
The vault — no init needed
The folder is the vault, just like Obsidian. glance finds the root by walking
up to the nearest .git or .obsidian marker (falling back to the file's
directory), then scans it recursively — so [[wikilinks]] resolve to notes
anywhere in the tree. No --init, no index file.
Agent-side: the memory layer
Markdown is the lingua franca agents use for memory and context. The problem:
today an agent reads a vault by loading whole files — expensive, and blind to how
notes connect. glance is the layer in between. Every read is bounded so it
stays token-cheap, and the retrieval and write paths are built for an agent.
All commands print JSON to stdout; the retrieval ones carry a token receipt
(how many tokens they used versus a naive whole-file read).
Reads
