joeyespo/grip

Grip is a small command-line tool that lets you preview a README or other Markdown file in your browser exactly as it will appear on GitHub, before you push your changes. You run it from the terminal in your project folder, it starts a local web server, and you open a browser tab to see the rendered result. When you save edits to the file, the preview updates automatically without needing to refresh the page. The reason the output matches GitHub so closely is that Grip sends your Markdown content to GitHub's own rendering API, which means it uses the same engine GitHub uses. This also means the tool requires an internet connection to render, and heavy use can hit GitHub's rate limits. If that happens, you can provide your GitHub username and a personal access token to get a higher limit. The README recommends using a token rather than a plain password for security. Beyond live preview, Grip can also export a finished HTML file with all styles embedded inline, so you can share a standalone file or use it to build simple documentation. It supports reading from standard input and writing to standard output, which lets you chain it with other command-line tools. You can point it at any Markdown file, not just READMEs, and you can configure the port, hostname, and other settings through a Python config file stored in a hidden folder in your home directory. A practical use case mentioned in the README is cloning a GitHub wiki repository locally, running Grip in that folder, and browsing the entire wiki as it would look on GitHub. Another is batch-exporting a set of linked Markdown files to HTML for offline documentation. Grip is installed via pip or Homebrew on macOS. It is built on Flask, a lightweight Python web framework, and communicates with GitHub only over HTTPS. The README notes that an offline rendering mode is in development as a fallback for when the API is unavailable.