Working with MarkBooks

A MarkBook (.mkb) is a ZIP archive containing Markdown pages, images, and metadata — a portable, self-contained document.

Opening a MarkBook

Double-click any .mkb file, or use File > Open in Markant. The sidebar automatically shows the chapter list.

Navigation

• The sidebar (⌃⌘S) lists all chapters. Click any chapter to navigate to it.
• Links between pages work automatically — click a link to another page in the MarkBook and Markant navigates there.
• Back / Forward (⌘[ / ⌘]) works as expected.
• Home (⌘⇧H) returns to index.md.

Inspector

Press ⌥⌘I to open the inspector. For MarkBooks it shows:

• File info — filename, size, dates
• MarkBook metadata — title, author, version (from markbook.yaml)
• Properties — YAML frontmatter from the current page

Creating MarkBooks

With AI

Ask Claude or another LLM to create a MarkBook using the /markbook skill:

/markbook Write a guide to quantum computing

With the CLI

Markant includes a command-line tool. Install it via Help > Install Command Line Tool, then:

mkb init "My Document"        # Create a project
mkb validate "My Document"    # Check structure
mkb pack "My Document"        # Package into .mkb

Manually

A MarkBook is just a ZIP with index.md at the root:

mkdir my-doc
echo "# Hello" > my-doc/index.md
cd my-doc && zip -r "../My Doc.mkb" .

The specification

MarkBooks is an open format (CC0 licence). The full specification is at markbooks.org.