reed

Terminal file viewer with syntax highlighting, inline images, and Mermaid diagrams -- powered by libghostty-vt.

Reed renders Markdown and source code files in a full-screen TUI. Markdown is converted to ANSI by termimad, fed through a libghostty-vt terminal instance, and painted cell-by-cell with dirty tracking. Source code files bypass termimad entirely and use syntect for direct syntax highlighting.

Features

• 14 color themes (7 dark, 7 light) -- cycle at runtime with t / T
• Syntax highlighting for fenced code blocks and standalone source files (Rust, Python, Go, Zig, TypeScript, TSX, Elixir, and 40+ languages via syntect)
• Inline images via the Kitty graphics protocol (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP)
• Standalone image viewing -- open image files directly (reed photo.png); displayed natively via Kitty/Sixel in supported terminals, falls back to hexyl
• Mermaid diagrams rendered to inline images when mmdc is on PATH
• fzf integration -- run reed with no arguments to get an interactive file picker with live preview; pipe a file list to narrow candidates
• Editor integration -- code files open in emacs, nvim, or your $EDITOR (first available); Markdown always uses the built-in viewer; use --editor to open any file directly in your editor
• Binary file viewing -- binary files open in hexyl when installed
• Document viewing -- Office files (docx, pptx, xlsx, odt, rtf, epub) converted to markdown via pandoc and rendered in the built-in viewer
• zmd integration -- when zmd is installed and a .qmd/data.db index exists, press S in the viewer or Ctrl-s in the fzf picker to open a hybrid search overlay over your markdown notes. Defaults to FTS (precise keyword matching); press Ctrl-t inside the overlay to toggle semantic/hybrid mode. Search terms are highlighted in the preview pane. zmd is fully optional -- reed works exactly the same without it
• Vendor filter -- toggle vendor/generated directories (node_modules, target, .git, etc.) in the fzf picker with Ctrl-v (requires fd)
• Content search -- press Ctrl-g in the fzf picker to search file contents via ripgrep with live-updating results; opens the file at the matching line
• Scrollback navigation -- PgUp/PgDn, Home/End, arrow keys, j/k, horizontal scroll with Left/Right or H/L, mouse wheel support
• Search -- / to search with smart-case; regex auto-detected from metacharacters; character-level highlighting; n/N to jump between matches
• Fuzzy heading jump -- press s to search headings via fzf
• Table of Contents -- press Tab to toggle a sidebar showing all headings
• Link picker -- press l to list and open URLs via fzf
• Code block picker -- press c to list code blocks and copy to clipboard
• Bookmarks -- m + letter to set, ' + letter to jump
• Follow/tail mode -- press F to auto-scroll on file changes (like tail -f)
• Export to HTML -- press e to export the current document as a styled HTML file
• Stdin piping -- echo "# Hello" | reed - reads from stdin
• Theme persistence -- saved to ~/.config/reed/preferences.toml; Ghostty gets its own ghostty_theme field (defaults to "FFE Dark") so dark-mode Ghostty and light-mode terminals coexist
• Ghostty detection -- auto-selects "FFE Dark" in Ghostty terminal
• Pipe-friendly -- reed --print FILE dumps themed output to stdout

Install

Requires Rust (nightly or stable 1.85+) and Zig 0.15.x on PATH (used by the libghostty-vt build).

cargo build --release
cp target/release/reed ~/bin/reed

On macOS / Apple Silicon you must re-sign after copying:

codesign -f -s - ~/bin/reed    # cp invalidates the ad-hoc signature

Usage

reed <file>              # view a file in interactive mode
reed                     # launch fzf file picker with preview
find . -name '*.rs' | reed   # pipe candidates into the picker
echo "# Hello" | reed -  # read from stdin
reed --print <file>      # print themed output to stdout
reed --preview <file>    # fzf preview mode (used internally)
reed --editor <file>     # open directly in $EDITOR / nvim / emacs
reed --theme "Gruvbox" <file>  # override saved theme
reed --line 42 <file>    # start at line 42

Interactive keybindings

Key	Action
q / Esc / Ctrl-c	Quit
j / Down / Scroll down	Scroll down
k / Up / Scroll up	Scroll up
PgDn / Space / Ctrl-f	Page down
PgUp / Ctrl-b	Page up
Ctrl-d / Ctrl-u	Half-page down / up
Home / g	Top of file
End / G	Bottom of file
Left / Right / H / L	Scroll left / right
Mouse wheel	Scroll up / down
/	Search (regex auto-detected)
n / N	Next / previous search match
Tab	Toggle Table of Contents sidebar
s	Fuzzy heading jump (fzf)
l	Link picker (open URL in browser)
c	Code block picker (copy to clipboard)
m + a-z	Set bookmark at current position
' + a-z	Jump to bookmark
e	Export to HTML
t / T	Next / previous theme
z	Toggle zen mode (fullscreen, no chrome)
F	Toggle follow/tail mode
S	zmd search (if available)
Ctrl-n / Ctrl-p	Next / previous buffer
?	Show keybinding help

fzf picker keybindings

Key	Action
Enter	Open file in viewer (or emacs/nvim/$EDITOR for code files)
Ctrl-/	Cycle preview layout
Ctrl-n	Next theme
Ctrl-b	Previous theme
Ctrl-v	Toggle vendor file filter (requires fd)
Ctrl-s	zmd search overlay (if available)
Ctrl-g	Content search via ripgrep (requires rg)

Themes

Dark: Default, Gruvbox, Solarized, Ayu, Flexoki, Zoegi, FFE Dark

Light: Default Light, Gruvbox Light, Solarized Light, Ayu Light, Flexoki Light, Zoegi Light, FFE Light

Architecture

src/
  main.rs       entry point, CLI (clap), fzf picker, tracing init
  viewer.rs     core viewer loop, frame rendering, image/mermaid pipeline
  input.rs      keyboard/scroll event handling, heading picker
  highlight.rs  syntax highlighting (syntect), Zig syntax bundling
  images.rs     Kitty graphics protocol, image loading/resizing
  mermaid.rs    Mermaid diagram detection and rendering via mmdc
  theme.rs      14 themes, skin builder
  config.rs     preferences persistence, Ghostty detection

Development

cargo build      # compile (requires Zig 0.15.x)
cargo test       # run 159 unit tests
cargo clippy     # lint
cargo fmt        # format

On macOS, set the dynamic library path before running from the build directory:

DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$(dirname $(find target/debug/build/libghostty-vt-sys-*/out \
  -name "libghostty-vt*" | head -1)) cargo run -- README.md

License

MIT -- Copyright (c) 2026 Pastel Sketchbook