kiri the reader

Read the files from the terminal as they are intended.

kiri in reading mode, the default where the terminal draws images

kiri /ˈkiri/ (KEE-ree) started as a play on kitty reader: a helpful reader of AI-generated (slop) Markdown for kitty. But it has since become more than just a "kitty reader": kiri renders Markdown documents, images, Mermaid diagrams, formulas, tables etc. in several terminals, kitty included. And it's not going to stop there!

• kiri (Estonian): a letter; also writing, script and pattern
• kiri (Finnish): a spurt, as in loppukiri, the final sprint of a race

Clone the repo, change to its directory, and install with Rust Cargo:

cargo install --path .

Useful commands:

kiri examples/README.md  # read a Markdown document
kiri photo.jpg           # or an image
kiri docs/*.md           # several files at once
some-command | kiri      # render another command's output
                         # as Markdown (or other formats)
kiri --doctor            # display terminal and settings info

And a few others for paging (especially for Markdown):

kiri README.md -f        # automatically reload the page on file changes
kiri README.md --fa      # and also jump to the edited part (F to cycle)
kiri README.md --no-reading # the text layout, for copying (M to toggle)

Use --light / --dark to view the document in light / dark mode.

For the shell completions, add following line to your ~/.bashrc:

eval "$(kiri --completions bash)"

for other shells, see options.

Documentation:

• configuration
• themes
• doctor: diagnostics

• Loading: A loading band/indicator at the bottom of a loading image, otherwise in the status line
• sixel terminals: Tested on xterm (xterm -ti vt340) and foot
• Animated images: when not supported: show the first frame as an image if possible

Not every feature is supported by every terminal. See above table for limitations.

✅ works · 🟡 partly · 📋 planned

kiri has been developed mostly by AI tools (Claude).

Useful commands:

make check          # run formatting, lints and tests
make build-release  # build the optimised binary

See also:

• architecture
• roadmap
• AGENTS.md: instructions for agents (duh)

kiri is built upon these awesome tools and packages:

• comrak: Markdown parsing
• syntect and two-face: syntax highlighting, with the grammars of two-face
• resvg: SVG images, also for rendering diagrams and formulas
• image: reading raster images
• fast_image_resize: image scaling
• parley and skrifa: reading mode typesetting
• merman: Mermaid diagrams
• RaTeX and KaTeX: LaTeX formulas
• Octicons: icons for Markdown alerts
• jailbee: AI tooling and environment isolation
• last but not least, kitty: terminal protocols that kickstarted kiri

With the advent of AI coding tools, such as opencode, Claude Code, Codex and Pi, the terminal has not faded away. Instead, I have noticed that the IDE stays closed most of the time and the terminal, with its tabs and panes, is all too familiar in my everyday work.

kiri is one step towards making the terminal environment a bit more manageable. I shouldn't need to open a plethora of GUI tools and a browser just to look at a document, an image or a PDF before answering "do I prefer option A or B?".

kiri should be enough.

- toravasaari

Sources of inspiration:

• bat: paging, and syntax highlighting for every code file
• less: key bindings
• btop: styling, menu and themes
• kitten icat: images
• GitHub's and Forgejo's visual style for the README pages

There are other awesome Markdown readers that you should definitely check out:

• kitty-markdown-viewer - a full-screen viewer for kitty with a table of contents, copy tools and much more
• glow - "Render markdown on the CLI, with pizzazz!"
• mdfried - "renders headers as Bigger Text"
• mdcat (archived) - still gets its job done

kiri is licensed under the MIT License; see LICENSE.

Licences and copyright notices of the third-party software and assets are included in each release archive, in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.