Plaindown

Plaindown is a Bun-powered Vite and VitePress plugin that exposes selected .md files as plain Markdown endpoints.

It is built for plain-text publishing and programmatic Markdown access in workflows like AI SEO, GEO, search indexing, content syndication, custom readers, and internal content pipelines.

Install

bun add @itznotabug/plaindown

Bun is required at runtime.

Quick Start

// .vitepress/config.ts
import { defineConfig } from "vitepress";
import { plaindown } from "@itznotabug/plaindown/plugin";

export default defineConfig({
    vite: {
        plugins: [
            plaindown({
                include: ["blog/**/*.md"],
            }),
        ],
    },
});

With the default format, blog/my-post.md is available at /blog/my-post.md.

Runtime

import { usePlaindown } from "@itznotabug/plaindown/runtime";

const plain = usePlaindown();

plain.url.value;
plain.url.for("blog/my-post.md");

await plain.load();
await plain.load("blog/my-post.md");

await plain.copy();
await plain.copy("blog/my-post.md");

Why Use It

• Publish raw Markdown beside rendered VitePress pages
• Give LLMs, crawlers, and automation tools a stable Markdown source
• Reuse Markdown in-app without making it publicly routable
• Optionally strip frontmatter from emitted files
• Split bundled Markdown into lazy-loaded chunks when emit: false

Core Options

plaindown({
    enabled: true,
    emit: true,
    include: ["**/*.md"],
    exclude: ["**/drafts/**"],
    format: ({ route }) => `${route}.md`,
    identifier: ({ sourcePath }) => sourcePath,
    stripFrontmatter: false,
    experimental: {
        chunks: (entry) => entry.dir,
    },
});

Option	What it does
emit	When true (default): Emits files at build time and serves matching routes in dev. When false: Bundles Markdown into JavaScript so usePlaindown() can load it without public endpoints.
include / exclude	Controls which Markdown files are indexed. Default safety exclusions stay in place, including common output directories and Vite build.outDir.
format	Controls the public URL. Default: ${route}.md.
identifier	Controls how runtime callers reference entries. Default: sourcePath.
stripFrontmatter	Removes frontmatter from emitted, served, and bundled content.
experimental.chunks	Only for emit: false. Splits bundled Markdown into lazy-loaded chunks. null or undefined falls back to _default.

How It Works

• Dev: middleware serves matching Markdown routes with caching
• Build: files are emitted concurrently with bounded IO
• Runtime: usePlaindown() resolves URLs and loads bundled or fetched Markdown

Notes

• Bun is required because the plugin uses its APIs
• experimental.chunks is intentionally experimental

Development

bun install
bun run typecheck
bun test
bun run build