GitHub - andrewmd5/dawn: A distraction-free writing environment; draft anything, write now.

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Dawn

dawn

Draft Anything, Write Now.

A distraction-free writing environment with live markdown rendering.

MIT License Release
Twitter

What is this?

Dawn is a lightweight document drafter that runs in your terminal. It renders markdown as you type: headers scale up, math becomes Unicode art, images appear inline. No electron, no browser, no network required.

Dawn is designed for low-latency, distraction free writing.

Portability

Dawn separates the engine from the platform layer. The core handles text editing, markdown parsing, and rendering. The platform layer (platform.h) provides I/O, making it straightforward to port to different environments.

Current targets:

  • Terminal (primary) - POSIX terminals with optional Kitty graphics/text sizing
  • Web (experimental) - Canvas-based rendering via Emscripten

The architecture makes adding new frontends relatively simple. Implement the platform API, and the engine handles everything else.

+---------------------------------------------+
|              Frontend                       |
+---------------------------------------------+
|              platform.h API                 |
+---------------------------------------------+
|  dawn.c  |  dawn_md  |  dawn_tex  |  ...   |
|          +-----------+------------+         |
|              Gap Buffer (text)              |
+---------------------------------------------+

Table of contents

Features

Live Markdown Rendering

Markdown renders as you write. Headers grow large. Bold becomes bold. Code gets highlighted. The syntax characters hide when you're not editing them.

Supported syntax:

  • Headers (H1-H6) with proportional scaling on compatible terminals
  • Bold, italic, strikethrough, ==highlight==, inline code
  • Blockquotes with nesting
  • Ordered and unordered lists with task items (- [ ] / - [x])
  • Horizontal rules
  • Links and autolinks
  • Footnotes with jump-to-definition (Ctrl+N)
  • Emoji shortcodes (:wave:)
  • Smart typography (curly quotes, em-dashes, ellipses)

Tables

Pipe-delimited tables with column alignment, rendered with Unicode box-drawing:

Table rendering

Mathematics

LaTeX math expressions render as Unicode art directly in your terminal. Both inline $x^2$ and display-mode $$ blocks are supported.

Math rendering

Supported: fractions, square roots, subscripts, superscripts, summations, products, limits, matrices, Greek letters, accents, and font styles (\mathbf, \mathcal, \mathbb, etc.).

Syntax Highlighting

Fenced code blocks display with language-aware syntax highlighting for 35+ languages.

Code highlighting

Writing Timer

Optional timed writing sessions to encourage flow. Select 5-30 minutes (or unlimited), then write until the timer completes. Auto-saves every 5 seconds.

  • Ctrl+P - pause/resume timer
  • Ctrl+T - add 5 minutes

Focus Mode

Press Ctrl+F to hide all UI (status bar, word count, timer) leaving only your text (and disabling deletions)

Navigation

  • Table of Contents (Ctrl+L) - Jump to any heading
  • Search (Ctrl+S) - Find text with context preview
  • Footnotes (Ctrl+N) - Jump between reference and definition

Table of contents

Search

Themes

Light and dark color schemes that adapt to your terminal's capabilities.

Themes

AI Chat (Experimental)

An optional AI assistant panel is available (Ctrl+/). Useful for asking questions or searching. Uses Apple foundational models.

Themes

Installation

Homebrew (macOS/Linux)

brew tap andrewmd5/tap
brew install dawn

PowerShell (Windows)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/andrewmd5/dawn/main/install.ps1 | iex

From Releases

Download a prebuilt binary from Releases.

From Source (macOS/Linux)

git clone --recursive https://github.com/andrewmd5/dawn.git
cd dawn
make
make install  # optional, installs to /usr/local/bin

Requirements:

  • CMake 3.16+
  • C compiler with C23 support (Clang 16+, GCC 13+)
  • libcurl

Build targets:

  • make - Build with debug info
  • make release - Optimized build
  • make debug - Debug build with sanitizers
  • make web - WebAssembly build (requires Emscripten)
  • make with-ai - Build with Apple Intelligence (macOS 26+)

From Source (Windows)

git clone --recursive https://github.com/andrewmd5/dawn.git
cd dawn
cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 18 2026" -A ARM64  # or -A x64 for Intel/AMD
cmake --build build --config Release

The executable will be at build/Release/dawn.exe.

Requirements:

  • CMake 3.16+
  • Visual Studio 2026 (or newer) with C++ workload

Usage

# Start a new writing session
dawn

# Open an existing file for editing
dawn document.md

# Preview (read-only)
dawn -p document.md

# Print rendered output to stdout
dawn -P document.md
cat document.md | dawn -P

Keyboard Reference

Key Action
Ctrl+F Toggle focus mode
Ctrl+R Toggle plain text (raw markdown)
Ctrl+L Table of contents
Ctrl+S Search
Ctrl+N Jump to/create footnote
Ctrl+G Edit image dimensions
Ctrl+E Edit document title
Ctrl+Z Undo
Ctrl+Y Redo
Ctrl+H Show all shortcuts
Esc Close panel/modal

File Format

Documents are saved as standard markdown with optional YAML frontmatter:

---
title: My Document
date: 2025-01-15
---

Your markdown content here.

License

MIT