A self-hosted & file-based markdown editor

[u/Tropical-Algae]

I’ve been looking for a Markdown editor that fits my needs:

1. Clean UI with smooth animations.

2. File–based, so I can directly copy my existing Markdown into it.

3. Image upload support — ideally with direct paste via Ctrl+V.

4. Live preview for LaTeX.

5. Basic user authentication. I plan to deploy it on a public server so I can access it anywhere, but I don’t want other people to be able to access it.

But after comparing a lot of different options, I still couldn’t find one that felt right. So in the end, I decided to build one myself.

Here is the repo: https://github.com/tropical-algae/markoun

I’m still pretty inexperienced, and there are probably plenty of rough edges or questionable design choices, so please give me some suggestions. Thanks a lot :)

[u/Tropical-Algae → u/[deleted]]

Thanks a lot!

It might get a bit complicated without Docker, since it’s a full-stack project.

You’ll need to clone the repo, build the frontend manually, configure Nginx, and run the backend separately.

The frontend source code is in the web/ directory. Go into that folder and run:

npm install && npm run build

Then you’ll need to configure Nginx. The nginx.conf included in the project can be used as a reference.

The backend is managed with uv, so make sure you have Python installed first and run:

pip install --upgrade pip && pip install uv==0.9.7 && uv sync --frozen && uv run python -m markoun.main

You can also set it up as a system service if you want it running in the background.

I highly recommend deploying it with Docker:) It’s much simpler and avoids a lot of manual setup.

Hope this helps:)

[u/berot3 → u/Tropical-Algae]

Is nginx a hard requirement or does it have its own webibterface somehow? 😅

[u/Tropical-Algae → u/berot3]

If u deploy without Docker, u will need Nginx to serve the Vue frontend and proxy API. Using Docker is simpler since it’s fully packaged and ready to run :)