Draft

Draft is a focused Windows Markdown editor with live preview, save snapshots, a floating formatting toolbar, and a calm desktop workspace.

Current version: 2.0.0 Download · Themes · Report issue

For Users

What Draft Is

Draft gives you a local Markdown workspace with three modes:

• Editor for distraction-light writing.
• Split for writing and previewing side by side.
• Preview for reading the rendered document.

It works with normal Markdown and text files on your Windows machine. Your files stay local unless you choose to put them somewhere else.

Download and Install

Get the latest Windows release from:

https://github.com/mefabc24/Draft/releases/latest

Release downloads normally include:

• Draft-Setup-v<version>.exe for the installed app.
• mefabc24.Draft-win-Portable.zip for the portable app.

Automatic update checks are available in installed Draft releases. Portable or development builds may show that updates are not available.

Highlights

• Three workspace modes: Editor, Split, and Preview for writing, editing, and reading Markdown.
• Live Markdown preview with support for GitHub-flavored Markdown, tables, task lists, raw HTML, and highlighted code blocks.
• Multiple preview themes, including Draft Dark, Assistant Dark, and Repository Dark.
• Floating Markdown Toolbar for quickly formatting content in both the editor and the rendered preview.
• Preview editing support for editing the Markdown source behind selected rendered content.
• Quick Insert Menu for adding common Markdown elements like headings, lists, images, links, tables, code blocks, quotes, and dividers.
• Flexible scroll sync options, including two-way sync, editor-to-preview sync, preview-to-editor sync, and follow-edited-section behavior.
• Save Snapshot System with separate restore points for the last manual save and the latest autosave.

Feature Preview

Floating Markdown Toolbar

Quickly format Markdown in both the editor and the rendered preview.

Quick Insert Menu

Insert common Markdown blocks without remembering the exact syntax.

Save Snapshots

Restore either the last manual save or the latest autosave.

Saving and Recovery

Draft supports manual save, autosave, and optional save-on-focus-lost behavior.

For each file, Draft keeps separate restore points for:

• The last manual save.
• The latest autosave.

This means you can recover recent work without overwriting the intentional save point you created manually.

Settings

Draft includes settings for:

• Startup behavior, update checks, autosave, save-on-focus-lost, and close confirmations.
• Editor typography, layout, Markdown syntax highlighting, whitespace display, indentation, cursor style, and pairing behavior.
• Preview theme and external-link confirmation.
• App theme, status bar visibility, and toolbar/control bar position.
• Default save location and optional .txt file association.
• A shortcuts page that lists the main keyboard shortcuts.
• Version and update controls.

Useful Shortcuts

General

Ctrl + S              Save file
Ctrl + Z              Undo
Ctrl + Shift + Z      Redo
Ctrl + D              Duplicate current line
Ctrl + Shift + Up     Move current line or selected lines up
Ctrl + Shift + Down   Move current line or selected lines down
Enter                 Continue the current Markdown list or quote

Floating Markdown Toolbar (FMT)

Ctrl + B              Bold
Ctrl + I              Italic
Ctrl + Shift + X      Strikethrough
Ctrl + E              Inline code
Ctrl + Shift + S      Spoiler
Ctrl + K              Link
Ctrl + Alt + I        Image
Ctrl + 1..6           Heading 1 through Heading 6
Ctrl + Shift + E      Edit the Markdown behind selected preview content

Quick Insert Menu (QIM)

Ctrl + Space         Open Quick Insert Menu at the cursor position
Shift + Left Click    Insert from Quick Insert and keep the menu open

For Developers

Architecture

Draft is a Windows desktop app with a native WPF shell and a React workspace embedded through WebView2.

• Draft.Wpf handles the desktop window, startup flow, local files, settings, autosave, snapshots, update checks, packaging hooks, and Windows integration.
• Draft.Web handles the Monaco editor, Markdown preview, preview themes, Floating Markdown Toolbar, Quick Insert Menu, and editor-facing interactions.

Tech Stack

• WPF on net10.0-windows
• WebView2
• Velopack
• React 19
• TypeScript 6
• Vite 8
• Monaco Editor
• react-markdown with remark-gfm
• rehype-raw for Markdown HTML support
• rehype-pretty-code for highlighted code previews

Repository Structure

Draft.Web/        React, TypeScript, Vite, Monaco, preview, toolbar, themes
Draft.Wpf/        WPF desktop host, WebView2 shell, settings, saves, packaging
Documentation/    Release and versioning documentation
Scripts/          Automation scripts for versioning and release packaging
Licenses/         Third-party license files
Releases/         Generated Velopack release artifacts

Releases/ is generated output and should not be committed.

Prerequisites

Install these tools before building the app:

Windows
.NET SDK with net10.0-windows support
Node.js and npm
WebView2 Runtime
Velopack CLI, only needed for creating releases

Development

Install web dependencies:

cd Draft.Web
npm install

Run the web workspace in Vite development mode:

npm run dev

Build the web workspace:

npm run build

Build the Windows desktop app from the repository root:

dotnet build Draft.Wpf/Draft.slnx

Run the Windows desktop app:

dotnet run --project Draft.Wpf/Draft.csproj

For desktop builds and releases, build Draft.Web first. Draft.Wpf includes the generated Draft.Web/dist files in its output and publish artifacts.

Useful Commands

# Web checks
cd Draft.Web
npm run lint
npm run build

# Desktop build
cd ..
dotnet build Draft.Wpf/Draft.slnx

# Update version fields
.\Scripts\update-version.ps1 -Version 2.0.0

# Create a Windows release
.\Scripts\create-release.ps1

Releasing

Version fields and release steps are documented in:

Documentation/VERSIONING.md
Documentation/RELEASING.md

The release script builds the web app, publishes the WPF host, creates Velopack packages, and writes generated files to:

Releases/

Upload the full generated asset set from Releases/ to the matching GitHub Release. Do not upload only the setup executable because Velopack updates also need the feed and package files.

Documentation

• Documentation/VERSIONING.md lists every manually maintained version field.
• Documentation/RELEASING.md describes how to create and publish a release.
• Draft.Web/README.md describes the web workspace.
• Draft.Wpf/README.md describes the Windows desktop host.

License

Draft is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See LICENSE for the full license text.

Bundled fonts remain under their original third-party licenses. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and Licenses/OFL-1.1.txt for details.

Credits

Application icons are based on assets from Icons8.