Glance

A lightweight macOS markdown viewer and editor. Defaults to formatted view. Designed as a companion to terminal-based workflows — Claude Code can open any markdown file it creates with mdview <path> for immediate review.

• Tabbed single window — every mdview <file> call opens in the same window; duplicate paths are deduped.
• Claude annotation review — select text, leave a comment, and Claude can read and resolve your notes via MCP.
• Rendered ↔ source toggle — ⌘E switches between formatted view and a CodeMirror editor.
• GFM rendering — GitHub Flavored Markdown with syntax-highlighted code blocks (highlight.js).
• Explicit save — ⌘S writes the file and clears the dirty dot. No autosave.
• Smart auto-reload — when a file changes on disk, clean tabs refresh silently; dirty tabs prompt "Keep mine / Load disk".
• Single-instance — mdview reuses the running Glance window; no duplicate processes.
• Session restore — open tabs are saved at quit and restored on next launch.
• Deleted-file marker — tabs whose files have been removed are marked visually.
• macOS light/dark — follows the system appearance.
• Native macOS menu — app (Glance) and Edit menus with the standard editing shortcuts (undo/redo, cut/copy/paste/select-all) and Quit. The Glance menu also has "Set up AI Integration…" and "Remove AI Integration…". App actions (⌘E toggle, ⌘S save) are handled in-window via keyboard shortcuts.

brew install --cask ncrohn/glance/glance

Apple Silicon only. Installs the notarized Glance.app into /Applications. Then open Glance and run Glance ▸ Set up AI Integration… to wire up the mdview CLI and Claude/Cursor integration.

Prefer not to use Homebrew? Download Glance_<version>_aarch64.dmg from the latest release, open it, and drag Glance.app to /Applications. Then open Glance and run Glance ▸ Set up AI Integration…. Apple Silicon only.

Requirements: Rust toolchain (stable), pnpm.

bash scripts/install.sh

Builds Glance in release mode, copies Glance.app to /Applications, and installs the mdview wrapper into ~/.local/bin (same as the Set up AI Integration… menu item).

Building a signed + notarized DMG for distribution — and cutting a release — is documented in RELEASING.md.

mdview path/to/file.md        # open a file (relative or absolute path)
mdview                        # open Glance with no file

Relative paths are resolved against the working directory before being forwarded to the app, so mdview works correctly from any directory.

If Glance is already running, the file is added as a new tab in the existing window. If the same path is already open, that tab is focused.

Claude can open any markdown doc it creates with mdview for immediate review:

mdview /absolute/path/to/file.md

• Works from any working directory (paths are resolved before forwarding).
• Reuses the running Glance window — no new app launches.
• Auto-refreshes when Claude rewrites the file (clean tabs update silently).

Optionally, add this line to your ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md so Claude prefers mdview for surfacing markdown:

When creating or updating a markdown file that the user should review, open it with `mdview <absolute-path>`.

Glance ▸ Set up AI Integration… wires everything up in one click. It installs the shared mdview CLI once, then configures every supported client it detects on your machine (Claude Code today; Cursor gets the MCP server + a rules doc). For Claude Code:

1. Installs the ~/.local/bin/mdview CLI wrapper.
2. Registers the bundled glance-mcp server into ~/.claude.json under mcpServers.glance. The command path points to the binary inside the running Glance.app, so it works on any machine where Glance is installed and survives app updates.
3. Appends a review guidance block to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md (idempotent — safe to run again).
4. Installs a glance agent skill at ~/.claude/skills/glance/SKILL.md. The skill teaches Claude the review-comment loop: open a file with mdview, read open comments with list_annotations, make the changes, then call resolve_annotation on each comment. It also describes how to interpret anchor states (exact, quote-only, drifted, orphaned) so Claude handles drifted or ambiguous annotations correctly.
5. Installs an auto-open hook (~/.claude/skills/glance/open-md-hook.sh) and registers it as a PostToolUse/Write entry in ~/.claude/settings.json. Whenever Claude writes a .md file inside the current project directory, the hook opens it in Glance automatically — so you see the document appear without running mdview yourself. The hook skips node_modules, dot-directories, and files outside the working directory, and always exits 0 so it can never block the agent.

All paths are derived from the running app's binary location, not this source checkout. Re-running setup is idempotent, so it doubles as the upgrade path — no migration needed. Glance ▸ Remove AI Integration… reverses the per-client connectors (leaving the shared mdview CLI in place).

1. Open a markdown file with mdview.
2. Select text in the rendered view and click Comment to attach a note.
3. In a Claude Code session, Claude calls list_annotations (MCP tool) to read your open comments with current line numbers — the server re-anchors every annotation against the live file on each read, so line numbers stay correct even after edits.
4. Claude makes the requested changes, then calls resolve_annotation to mark each comment resolved. The change is reflected live in Glance.

v1 scope: user → Claude (read + resolve). Claude-authored highlights are future work (v2).

A glance://annotations/{path} resource is also registered for direct resource reads.

pnpm install            # install JS dependencies
pnpm tauri dev          # run in dev mode (hot reload)
pnpm test               # frontend unit tests (vitest)
cd src-tauri && cargo test   # Rust unit tests (CLI path resolution)
pnpm build              # production JS build
pnpm exec tsc --noEmit  # TypeScript type check

Tests: 5 frontend suites (22 tests) + 4 Rust CLI tests.

MIT © 2026 Nicholas Crohn