Mark

A native, lightweight, security-first WYSIWYG Markdown editor for macOS, built on Tauri 2.

Mark is a from-scratch rewrite of Mark Text that ditches the 200 MB Electron shell and ships a 25 MB native binary instead. WKWebView for the UI, Rust for the backend, no Chromium runtime, no Node.js runtime. Boots in under a second, sandboxes filesystem access by design, and code-signs ad-hoc — no $99/year Apple Developer account required to ship to friends.

Why Mark?

A markdown editor shouldn't weigh as much as Photoshop and shouldn't take six seconds to open a file. Mark exists because the WYSIWYG markdown experience of Mark Text was abandoned in 2023 and the community forks were stuck on the same heavy Electron base. So:

• Lightweight: ~25 MB on disk, ~80 MB at idle. Cold start under a second.
• Native: System WKWebView, native macOS menu, NSSpellChecker, ad-hoc Gatekeeper-friendly signing.
• Open: MIT, fork-friendly. Every module ships with a MODULE_CONTRACT documenting purpose, scope, and verification — refactor with confidence.
• Honest: Alpha is alpha. The Status feature matrix is front-and-center, not buried. What works has tests; what doesn't is in the followup index with a target milestone.
• Yours: No telemetry, no cloud, no plugin marketplace pulling code from strangers. Files are files; the editor stays local.

Mark isn't trying to be the most feature-rich Markdown editor — it's trying to be the lightest one that still feels native on macOS.

Themes

Light, dark, sepia, and 15+ named palettes (gruvbox, catppuccin, ayu, tokyo-night, solarized, rose-pine, …) ship in the box. Live cross-window broadcast keeps the Editor and Settings windows in sync.

⚠️ This is an alpha. Daily-driver-quality for routine writing on Apple Silicon (that's how it's developed), but it has known gaps. For a frozen-but-shipping Electron-engine alternative right now, install mark (Phase A) instead.

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How it works

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Vue 3 + Pinia + Element Plus + muya WYSIWYG engine  │   <-  src/renderer/
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  M-013a typed IPC contract (32 commands)             │
│  ipc.runtime: invoke / listen wrappers, type-checked │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│              Tauri 2 webview + IPC bridge            │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Rust backend (src-tauri/src/)                       │
│  ├─ m001  panic, save/close state machine, validate  │
│  ├─ m005  prefs (tauri-plugin-store + migration)     │
│  ├─ m006  global shortcuts                           │
│  ├─ m007  spellchecker (NSSpellChecker)              │
│  ├─ m008  font enumeration (font-kit)                │
│  ├─ m009  native menu                                │
│  ├─ m010  path sandbox + URL whitelist               │
│  ├─ m013b fs / search / watcher (notify-debouncer)   │
│  ├─ m015  pandoc bridge                              │
│  ├─ m016  auto-updater (ed25519)                     │
│  ├─ m017  recent docs                                │
│  ├─ m018  screenshot (macOS screencapture)           │
│  └─ m019  keychain (datacenter)                      │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The Vue frontend is ported from Mark Text v1.2.3; the muya engine has zero Electron coupling (verified — grep -r 'require..electron' src/muya/ returns 0 hits). The IPC layer between Vue and Rust is fully typed: every renderer→backend call goes through M-013a CommandMap which is schema-validated against the tauri::generate_handler! list at boot. Drift between frontend and backend trips a startup dialog instead of a confusing runtime error.

Backend libraries doing the actual work: notify + notify-debouncer-full for file-watching, grep-searcher (in-process — no ripgrep shell-out) for folder search, font-kit for system font enumeration, tauri-plugin-store for prefs persistence, tauri-plugin-updater for ed25519-signed auto-update.

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Status

v0.0.1-alpha — usable for routine markdown writing on macOS Apple Silicon, not yet a drop-in replacement for the Electron build.

Feature	Status
WYSIWYG markdown editing (muya engine)	✅
Save / Save As / Open file	✅
Multi-tab editing	✅
Open Folder / sidebar tree	✅
External-edit live reload (file-watcher)	✅
Cross-window preference broadcast (Settings ↔ Editor)	✅
Theme switching (light / dark / sepia + custom CSS)	✅
Native macOS menu + Cmd+Q	✅
Global shortcut (Cmd+Shift+M)	✅
Dirty-tab close prompt (Cmd+W on unsaved)	✅
Mermaid v11 / KaTeX / Vega diagrams	✅
Spell-check via NSSpellChecker	✅
Migration from Mark Text v1.2.x preferences	✅
Auto-update via Homebrew	✅
Find in file (Cmd+F)	⚠ deferred to beta
Find in folder (ripgrep)	⚠ deferred to beta
Print to PDF via Pandoc	⚠ requires Pandoc on PATH
Linux / Windows builds	❌ macOS-only at alpha
Plugin marketplace	❌ out of scope

Full followup index (currently 55 active items, bucketed alpha / beta / RC / post-1.0) lives in docs/development-plan.xml.

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Install

Tauri alpha (this branch)

brew tap xronocode/mark
brew install --cask mark@alpha

Ad-hoc signed. The cask postflight clears com.apple.quarantine so Gatekeeper accepts the local signature without prompting. No sudo xattr dance.

Electron stable channel

If you want a battle-tested daily driver right now, install the Electron Phase A build instead:

brew tap xronocode/mark
brew install --cask mark

Both casks coexist (Mark.app + Mark Alpha.app). Run them side-by-side and migrate when the alpha hits feature parity.

When v2.0 stable ships, the mark cask rolls forward to the Tauri engine and mark@v1 becomes a 12-month maintenance channel for users who can't migrate yet.

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Quality

This isn't a weekend port. The codebase has been polished in 8 phases of sign-off work:

Surface	Coverage
Renderer unit tests	310 tests, 8/10 stores at 100% line coverage
Backend unit tests	392 tests, 80.88% workspace line coverage (85.22% excl. runtime-bound modules)
End-to-end (Playwright)	5 specs against built renderer
CI matrix	macOS-14 + ubuntu-latest, on push & PR
Audit passes	grace-reviewer full-integrity, twice

702 unit tests + 5 e2e + CI gate — see .github/workflows/test.yml.

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Build from source

Requirements:

• Rust 1.79+ (rustup install stable)
• Node 20 LTS
• Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install) — for safaridriver, code-signing, and the Tauri webview shim

git clone https://github.com/xronocode/mark.git
cd mark
npm ci
npm run tauri build --debug      # → target/debug/bundle/macos/Mark.app
# or
npm run tauri build              # release: ~22 MB binary, LTO + strip

For a fast inner loop:

npm run tauri dev                # watches src/renderer + src-tauri

If tauri dev shows a blank window, see src-tauri/tauri.dev.conf.json — Vue 3 dev mode requires 'unsafe-eval' in CSP for runtime template compilation, and that override is gated to dev only.

Test

npm test                         # vitest (renderer)
cd src-tauri && cargo test --bin mark   # rust unit tests
npm run test:e2e                 # Playwright against built renderer

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Heritage

Mark stands on three repos worth of upstream:

1. marktext/marktext (2017–2023) — original Electron Mark Text by @Jocs. WYSIWYG markdown engine (muya), themes, the entire UX paradigm. Abandoned in 2023.
2. Tkaixiang/marktext (2023–) — community fork that picked up critical security and crash fixes (CVE-2023-2318, EPIPE crash, dark-mode flash, Mermaid v11 upgrade, full-WYSIWYG mode). The Phase A Electron stable in this repo is downstream of Tkaixiang.
3. This repo (xronocode/mark) — Phase A Electron 41 modernization (shipped as v1.2.3) + Phase B Tauri 2 rewrite (this branch).

The Phase A Electron build is feature-complete and frozen at v1.2.3 — it gets security fixes only. Phase B (Tauri) is where active development happens; when it reaches stable, the mark cask rolls forward.

Branch	Engine	Status	Cask
main (this)	Tauri 2 + Rust + Vue 3	alpha	mark@alpha
electron	Electron 41 + Vue 2	stable, security-only	mark
v1-on-tkaixiang	upstream tracker	follows Tkaixiang	—

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Contributing

Pull requests welcome. The project follows the GRACE (Graph-RAG Anchored Code Engineering) methodology — every module has a MODULE_CONTRACT header documenting its purpose, scope, dependencies, and verification reference. The docs/ directory carries the development plan, knowledge graph, and verification matrix as XML artifacts that humans and agents both read.

Path of least friction:

1. Fork → branch from main.
2. Run npm test && cd src-tauri && cargo test --bin mark locally.
3. Open a PR — the GitHub Actions matrix gates merge on macOS + Linux.

For larger changes, please open an issue first; the codebase has a fairly opinionated layout (see How it works).

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Support the project

Mark is built on personal time. If it saves you from a 200 MB Electron install or 6-second cold starts, consider buying me a coffee — it goes directly into more polish phases like the one this repo just went through.

Other ways to help: ⭐ star the repo, file issues with concrete repros, or send a PR fixing something on the followup list.

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License

MIT, inherited from upstream Mark Text.

Maintainer

@xronocode · Ko-fi