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Introduction

mdbin is a place to share Markdown.

Paste a document, get a clean link, and send it to anyone — your notes, a README, a proposal, or a design doc render as a proper page instead of a wall of plain text. mdbin is built and run by forjed.io.

What makes it more than a plain pastebin is live rendering: fenced code is syntax-highlighted, and fenced diagrams are drawn for real — Mermaid, PlantUML, and hand-drawn FreeDraw flowcharts — and LaTeX math is typeset.

Create and share

Hit New, write (or paste) Markdown, and submit. You get a short, stable URL you can share or bookmark. Every document also has a plain-text Raw view for copying the original source (a password-protected one once you've unlocked it; a private one only for its owner; a burn-after-reading one never).

What renders

mdbin understands standard Markdown — headings, lists, tables, blockquotes, links, and images — plus these, each with its own guide:

  • Code blocks — fenced code with automatic syntax highlighting, and change (diff) views.
  • Mermaid diagrams — flowcharts, sequence diagrams, and more, from text.
  • PlantUML diagrams — sequence, class, activity and component diagrams.
  • FreeDraw diagrams — flowcharts with a hand-drawn look.
  • Math — inline $…$ and display $$…$$ equations, typeset with KaTeX.

Diagrams on their own

Sometimes you want the picture, not a document. The diagram tool renders Mermaid or PlantUML live as you type and downloads it as a PNG — light, dark, or both at once in a zip. It runs entirely in your browser, so nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored; sign in and you can also save a diagram to your account and come back to edit it later.

Comments, forking, and expiry

Readers can leave line-level comments anchored to a specific block, so feedback lands exactly where it belongs. You can fork any document that isn't private, password-protected or burn-after-reading to start your own copy, and documents can be set to expire so they don't live forever.

Comments, forks and private documents

With a confirmed account, the Configure button on the publish page (next to Add password) lets you switch off comments, forks, or both for the document you're about to publish, or make it private. Comments and forks are on, and private is off, unless you change them.

  • Comments off removes the comment button, the count and the hover markers for everyone — you included — and nobody can leave a comment, on the page or through an agent.
  • Forks off removes the Fork button, and nobody can fork the document, on the page or through an agent.
  • Private means only you can open it, signed in to the account you published it from. Anyone else who opens the link is told access is denied; a visitor who isn't signed in is asked to sign in first and brought back afterwards. mdbin's administrators can also open a private document. Nobody can fork it, its link preview never shows its title, and its images are still served from the public image host, as for a password-protected document.
  • It's permanent. Like a password, the choice is made at publish time and can't be changed afterwards.

Without a confirmed account the button is shown but disabled; sign in to use it.

Passwords and burn after reading

Two optional settings on the publish page, next to the expiry, for documents that shouldn't be readable by just anyone who comes across the link.

  • Password. Type one (8 to 64 characters) and readers must enter it before they see anything — not even the title. Once someone has unlocked a document, their browser stays unlocked for it until they sign out or their session ends. Pick something hard to guess and send it separately from the link.
  • Burn after reading. The document can be read once. Opening the link shows a confirmation page first; the document is only shown — and destroyed — when the reader clicks Read and destroy. After that, the link says it was burned. Link previews in chat apps and email never trigger the read, and as the publisher you'll land on that confirmation page yourself, with a button to copy the link instead of opening it.

You can use both together: the reader enters the password first, then confirms the read.

A few things to know:

  • Both are permanent. Neither can be added, changed or removed after publishing, and a forgotten password can't be recovered — not even by us.
  • Neither kind can be forked, and a burn-after-reading document takes no comments.
  • Its Raw view needs the same unlock as the page; a burn-after-reading document has no Raw view at all.
  • Images aren't password-protected. They're served from mdbin's image CDN like any other document's, so someone who has an image's own address can open it without the password.
  • A burn-after-reading document read straight after publishing may show broken images. mdbin copies images to its own store a few moments after publishing; read before that finishes and some may not load (pasted images can still appear while their temporary upload copy lasts). There's no second chance to see them, so give it a moment before sending the link.

Privacy and safety

Markdown is rendered safely: raw HTML is disabled, links are restricted to safe protocols and hardened with rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer", and the output is sanitized before it ever reaches the page. You can write freely without worrying about scripts running in someone else's browser.