Lobster.js
Extended Markdown with layout blocks and footnotes
Details
- External ID
- 47299529
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Lobster.js
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- March 8, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 7
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.4108241082410824
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
Hi HN!I built lobster.js which is an extended Markdown parser that renders directly in the browser — no build tool, no framework, no configuration.The entire setup is a single script tag: <script type="module"> import { loadMarkdown } from "https://hacknock.github.io/lobsterjs/lobster.js"; loadMarkdown("./content.md", document.getElementById("content")); </script> It's particularly useful for GitHub Pages sites where you want Markdown-driven content without pulling in Jekyll or Hugo.---What makes it different from marked.js or markdown-it:Standard parsers convert Markdown to HTML — that's it. lobster.js adds layout primitives to the Markdown syntax itself:- :::warp id defines a named content block; [~id] places it inside a silent table cell. This is how you build multi-column layouts entirely in Markdown, without touching HTML. - :::details Title renders a native <details>/<summary> collapsible block. - :::header / :::footer define semantic page regions. - Silent tables (~ | ... |) create borderless layout grids. - Cell merging: horizontal (\|) and vertical (\---) spans. - Image sizing: .---CSS-first design:Every rendered element gets a predictable lbs-* class name (e.g. lbs-heading-1, lbs-table-silent). No default stylesheet is bundled — you bring your own CSS and have full control over appearance.---The showcase site is itself built with lobster.js. The sidebar is nav.md, and each page is a separate Markdown file loaded dynamically via ?page= query parameters — no JS router, no framework.Markdown is the one format that humans and LLMs both write fluently. If you want a structured static site without a build pipeline, lobster.js lets that Markdown become a full web page — layout and all.GitHub: https://github.com/Hacknock/lobsterjs Showcase: https://hacknock.github.io/lobsterjs-showcase/
Enrichment
- Theme
- markdown editors and writing tools
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- markdown extension with layout blocks and footnotes
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes A lightweight JavaScript Markdown parser with extensions for custom layout blocks and footnotes is easily built using standard regex/AST parsing techniques within a weekend using AI assistance.
Discussion
6 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: get-colibri.com, lobster.js, technical article posting sites with extended Markdown syntax
Concerns raised: Markdown lacks fine-grained control for complex formatting, Cannot insert line breaks within table cells, Writing HTML within Markdown reduces readability, AI-generated content perception affects credibility
Feature requests: Support for :::details syntax (extended Markdown), Line break support inside table cells, Wrap blocks for better content control
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 195 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #114 of 196 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 124 days after the earliest competitor.
- Writemark, a dependency free web component for inline Markdown editing · hn · 2026-07-25 · 53 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- Quikdown · hn · 2026-06-21 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- Mkdnsite · hn · 2026-04-01 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.51
- domscout · ph · 2026-09-25 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.50
- Docx-to-Markdown · hn · 2026-09-16 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.49
- Markpad · hn · 2026-01-28 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- HUI · ph · 2026-09-18 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- Markdown Prism · hn · 2026-02-14 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.47
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a dev tools tool for Sales yet.