"I wanted a fast and comfortable way to read that content without leaving the command line."
Rivo Link works with AI coding tools every day. Claude Code, Codex, and similar tools all run in the terminal and regularly produce large amounts of Markdown output - documentation, summaries, generated code explanations. The problem is that raw Markdown in a terminal is not easy to read. It is cluttered with syntax, hard to scan, and interrupts the flow of working in the command line.
Rather than switching to a browser or a separate editor just to read a file, Rivo built leaf - a terminal-based Markdown viewer that renders content cleanly without leaving the command line environment.
Built for the Developer Workflow
leaf is designed for developers and terminal users who work daily with documentation, AI-generated content, notes, and README files. The goal is not to replace more fully-featured Markdown editors but to solve a specific friction point: the moment when you need to quickly read a Markdown file and everything about your workflow keeps you in the terminal.
Rivo is a software developer from Madagascar with a focus on open-source developer tools. Over the month since launch, development has been shaped by community feedback - adding features, fixing bugs, and bringing in contributors. The HN update he posted after the first month walked through what changed and why, a level of transparency about the build process that drew attention from the developer community following along.
leaf is open source and available now on GitHub.
