MarkEdit-wikilinks

Obsidian-style [[wikilinks]] for MarkEdit that leverages markedit-api.

A small CodeMirror extension that adds wikilink syntax highlighting and click-to-follow navigation, with Obsidian-style vault-wide resolution. Renders in both the editor and the MarkEdit-preview pane.

Installation

Copy dist/markedit-wikilinks.js to ~/Library/Containers/app.cyan.markedit/Data/Documents/scripts/. Details here.

Once installed, restart MarkEdit to apply the changes.

If wikilink resolution fails because the file is in a sibling folder, you may also need to grant folder access by opening your vault root via File → Open… once.

How to Use

Type any Obsidian-style wikilink in your Markdown:

Syntax	Meaning
[[Note Name]]	Link to Note Name.md
[[Note Name|Display Text]]	Link with custom display text
[[docs/foo]]	Vault-relative path
![[Embed]]	Embed syntax (highlighted, not yet rendered as image)

To follow a link:

• In the editor: ⌘-click on the wikilink.
• In the MarkEdit-preview pane: plain click.

Resolution mirrors Obsidian, in this order:

1. Same folder as the current file.
2. Vault-relative path if the target contains / (e.g. [[docs/foo]]).
3. Recursive search from the vault root (the directory containing .obsidian/), skipping hidden dot-dirs and node_modules / dist / build / target, budget-capped at 5,000 entries per click.

If nothing resolves, a diagnostic dialog shows what was tried and offers to create <target>.md in the current folder.

Not yet supported

• #header and ^block-id fragments — stripped, not navigated.
• Inline embed rendering — ![[image.png]] is highlighted but not displayed as an image.
• Vault index caching — the recursive search rebuilds per click. Fast enough for hundreds of files; large vaults may want a session-scoped index.
• Autocomplete for link targets.
• User-configurable settings.

Building

Run yarn install && yarn build to build and deploy the script. The build also copies the bundle to MarkEdit's scripts folder, so a yarn reload will pick up your changes immediately.

Architecture

main.ts              wires four pieces into MarkEdit
src/parser.ts        Lezer inline parser → emits WikiLink / WikiLinkEmbed / Mark / Target / Alias nodes
src/decoration.ts    CodeMirror ViewPlugin → styles those nodes in the editor
src/follow.ts        domEventHandlers → ⌘-click in the editor → resolve and open
src/preview.ts       MutationObserver on .markdown-body → transform text into <a> + plain-click handler

A real Lezer parser is used rather than a regex decoration so wikilink nodes:

• don't fire inside fenced code blocks (Lezer context handles that for free),
• play nicely with code folding and syntax-aware selection,
• let the click handler use syntaxTree.resolveInner(pos) instead of re-matching against document text.

The preview integration post-processes the rendered HTML inside .markdown-body because MarkEdit-preview's markdown-it pipeline doesn't know [[…]] and has no extension API for adding parsers. The observer skips text inside <code>, <pre>, <script>, <style>, and existing <a> elements, and disconnects during its own mutations to avoid feedback loops. It's a no-op when MarkEdit-preview isn't installed.

Contribution

Issues and PRs welcome. Build verification runs via GitHub Actions on every push and PR. If you change source, please run yarn build and commit the updated dist/markedit-wikilinks.js along with your changes so end users get the fix without needing a toolchain.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.