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Quickstart

Getting started

Write your first .3md

A 3md document is a frontmatter block followed by one or more planes. Create a file named week.3md:

---
3md: 1.0
axis: time
title: My Week
---
@plane z=0 label="Monday"
# Monday
- [ ] Standup at 9
- [ ] Review the parser PR

@plane z=1 label="Tuesday"
# Tuesday
- [ ] Draft the spec
- [ ] Lunch with design

@plane z=2 label="Wednesday"
# Wednesday
- [ ] Ship the release

What each part does:

  • The --- fenced block is frontmatter. The 3md: key is required (it is the file's magic marker). axis: names the Z axis; title: is human-readable.
  • Each @plane z=N label="..." line starts a new plane. z is required and must be a unique number per plane; label is optional.
  • Everything after a directive, up to the next @plane or end of file, is that plane's Markdown body.

That is a complete, valid document. You can also start even smaller: a plain Markdown file with just a frontmatter header and no @plane lines is a valid one-plane document.

View it

GitHub cannot preview .3md files natively, so use one of these.

Option 1: the hosted viewer (no install)

Open the viewer and paste your source, or share a link:

https://corvidlabs.xyz/3md/

The viewer renders the planes as a 3D stack you can scrub, drag, and step through. The full editor and demo live at corvidlabs.xyz/3md/. See the viewer docs for the available view modes.

Option 2: embed the web component

Drop the <three-md> element into any HTML page:

<script type="module" src="https://corvidlabs.xyz/3md/assets/three-md.js"></script>
<three-md src="/week.3md"></three-md>

Option 3: install the CLI

The threemd command-line tool validates and inspects documents:

brew install CorvidLabs/tap/threemd

threemd validate week.3md   # prints "ok" or exits non-zero with the error
threemd info week.3md       # prints version, axis, title, and each plane
threemd html week.3md       # renders the document to HTML on stdout

See the CLI reference for every subcommand.

Next steps

  • The format in depth - all frontmatter keys, plane attributes, fenced grids, and cross-plane links.
  • The viewer - view modes and embedding options.