Previewing Markdown in Emacs with grip-mode

Emacs’s markdown-mode offers several preview options, but finding one that “just works” took some exploration.

The xwidget-webkit Approach

My first attempt used markdown-live-preview-window-function with xwidget-webkit—Emacs’s embedded WebKit browser. The idea: render markdown to HTML and display it in a split window.

(defun my/markdown-live-preview-window-xwidget (file)
  (xwidget-webkit-browse-url (concat "file://" file))
  (xwidget-webkit-buffer))

Four problems killed this approach:

1. External dependency — HTML generation requires markdown (default) or pandoc binary
2. Emacs build requirement — xwidget support must be compiled in (--with-xwidgets), which isn’t universal
3. Temp file pollution — Live preview generates HTML files that require cleanup
4. Complexity — Managing the xwidget buffer lifecycle adds code I’d rather not maintain

The grip-mode Solution

grip-mode provides GitHub-flavored markdown preview using a local server. The key insight: use go-grip instead of Python’s grip to avoid GitHub API rate limits and work fully offline.

Setup

Install go-grip:

go install github.com/chrishrb/go-grip@latest

Configure Emacs:

(use-package grip-mode
  :config
  (setopt grip-command 'go-grip)
  (setopt grip-preview-use-webkit nil)
  (setopt grip-update-after-change nil)
  :bind (:map markdown-mode-map
         ("C-c C-c p" . grip-mode)))

Now C-c C-c p launches a local server and opens the preview in your default browser. The preview updates on save.

Why go-grip Over Python grip

The original Python grip uses GitHub’s Markdown API, which has rate limits (60 requests/hour unauthenticated). You can add a GitHub token, but that’s extra configuration.

go-grip renders locally using a Go markdown library—no network requests, no rate limits, no authentication.

Comparison

Sometimes the best solution is a small, focused tool that does exactly one thing well.