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