The room
Start with something ordinary. You're writing notes nobody else is meant to see yet — a diagnosis, a legal memo still in draft, the internal design document for a system your company hasn't announced, a page of a journal you're not ready to show anyone. You open an editor, and before you've typed a full sentence you run the check that's become reflexive: is this going anywhere? Is it syncing the moment I stop typing? Who finds out I opened this file at eleven at night? None of that is a question about writing. You only wanted somewhere good to do it.
Most markdown editors don't ask you to think about that on purpose. They just never gave you a reason not to. An account gets created because accounts are how software gets built now. A sync toggle turns itself on because sync is what people expect from an app with a cloud icon in the corner. A line in a settings page opts you into "anonymous usage statistics" because that's how the checkbox was drawn. None of it is usually malicious. Almost none of it was actually decided by you.
There's a second question sitting under the first, and it's the sharper one. It isn't only who might look — it's what happens to the file once it's sitting on a server you don't control. That server gets breached eventually; on a long enough timeline, they all do. That company gets acquired, and the fine print changes under you. That account gets phished, or reused, or left signed in on a laptop that goes missing. None of it requires anyone to be watching you specifically. It only requires your document to be dancing around in a cloud that was never yours to secure in the first place.
No server holding a copy for someone to breach, because there's no server.
What “no” costs
Marqora starts from a different place: nothing leaves the machine unless you ask it to. Not the document, not a hash of it, not a crash report, not a quiet "anonymous" ping. That sentence is easy to put on a download page. It's a much harder rule to actually keep, because keeping it means saying no to conveniences that would otherwise be free.
Take something as small as checking for updates. Nearly every desktop app quietly asks its own server, the moment it opens, whether a newer version exists. Marqora doesn't — not because a version number is precious, but because nobody asked it to. That is the whole rule: the app does nothing on its own. What it keeps instead is a clock: after enough days pass, a line appears in the status bar suggesting you go look for yourself.
Or take link checking. Marqora underlines a link to a file that no longer exists, or a heading that was renamed — the kind of thing that renders exactly like a working link while it quietly rots underneath. It will not check whether a link out to the web still resolves, because confirming that means reaching out to the web, and reaching out is the one thing that isn't on the table.
The dictionary is the one already on your PC — nothing downloaded, nothing kept in sync. The editor engine itself is fetched once, when the app is built, and never reached for again while you're writing.
And when a document is actually ready to leave — to go to someone else, on purpose — there's no link with an expiry date, and no account they have to make first. A Folio is one file: the document, every image it uses, all of it inlined into a page that opens by double-click, in any browser, offline. If the document points at pictures on the web, Marqora names the sites and offers to collect those too — so the person who opens it isn't quietly fetching from strangers either.
The same goes for saying something about a document that isn't yours. Commenting usually means a shared service: the document uploaded, everyone signed in, the comments kept on someone else's server. In Marqora you select a passage, write a note, and the document itself is never touched. When you're done, the review is a file — the page as you read it, your notes in its margin — sent however you like, or copied as markdown for an AI to work through. And the file is where the review lives: drop it back in, days later or on another machine, and carry on.
None of it adds up to a smaller editor. The restraint is pointed outward, at the network; it was never allowed to reach the writing. Inside the window the panes move together by source line, a table redraws the moment you close the row, a diagram appears underneath the words that describe it, the math is set the way a journal would set it, and the preview reads like a printed page rather than a browser's idea of one. The rule costs you a sync service. It doesn't cost you the editor.
Nothing happens that you didn't decide.
The short version
What's actually in the box
Everything below ships in the zip, works offline, and is reachable from the keyboard — the modern set in full, with nothing held back for a paid tier that doesn't exist.
Split view
Source and rendered preview side by side, scrolling in lockstep through source line numbers.
Color themes
Palettes for headings, links, callouts, tables, code and diagrams: use one for the preview, for your exports, or a different one for each. Point at one on the menu bar to see it live. Your files are never touched.
Light, dark or system
Mica, an extended title bar and a theme that tracks Windows as it changes — diagrams included. Dark is a screen setting: whatever you print, export or copy stays light.
Monaco editing
The same editing engine VS Code uses: real find and replace, multi-level undo, go-to-line.
Tabs that remember
Pin the one you keep to hand and it moves left, out of reach of Close Other Tabs. Reopen Closed Tab brings back what you didn't mean to close; a right-click copies a path, or a ready-made markdown link to it.
Read-only documents
Tick Read-Only on a tab and Marqora will not write that file until you take the tick off — Save and Save All pass it over. It is Marqora's own mark, remembered per file, and it never touches the Windows one.
Outline panel
Every heading in one list, narrowed as you type, carrying the same section numbers the preview shows — and Ctrl+R in the source links to any of them.
Section numbers
Headings are numbered on screen and in every export, from whichever level you pick — for one document or for all of them. Number Sections writes those numbers into the markdown itself, for text going somewhere that won't number it.
Find All
Every match across every open tab, in one list, grouped by document, walked with the arrow keys.
Replace All
The same list with a replace box folded out, changing every match across every open tab at once. It asks first, and writes nothing to disk.
List editing
Tab and Shift+Tab nest a list item and everything under it, renumbering both lists. Lists written with one repeated number keep it.
Mermaid diagrams
Flowcharts, sequence and state diagrams render inline as you type. Open one full size in its own window, or copy it straight out as a picture — and in an exported page or a Folio, a click lifts a diagram out to fit the window.
KaTeX math
Inline and display math, laid out properly, exported the same way it looks on screen.
Spell check
Underlines as you type, using the dictionary already on your PC — nothing downloaded.
Folios
Unique to Marqora, a Folio shares a whole set of documents, with the images they use, as one self-contained file. It opens by double-click in any browser, so the person you send it to doesn't need Marqora.
Review comments
Comment on someone else's document the way Word does — select a passage, add a note, see it in a sidebar — without changing a character of it. Share the review as one read-only page with your notes in the margin, or copy it as markdown for an AI to act on. Drop that page back into Marqora later and the review picks up where it was, pictures and all.
Rich exports
Self-contained HTML, print-ready PDF, and a real Word document with proper heading styles, numbering and an updatable contents. Copy as Rich Text drops the same into Word or Outlook: tables that keep their header, diagrams as pictures, math as a real equation.
Keyboard-first
Every command has a shortcut. Alt drives the whole menu bar if you'd rather not reach for the mouse.
Command line
marqora-cli does what the Format, Find, Export and Share menus do, from a terminal, through the same code: format a folder of notes, number headings, catch every dead link before a commit, make a PDF, Word file or web page of every document in a folder, or build a Folio from a script. Offline by default, with JSON output and fixed exit codes. Read the manual and the recipes; both install with it.
Color, without touching your file
Markdown is mostly gray. Pick a color theme and headings, links, callouts, tables, code and diagrams take its colors — in light and in dark, in the preview and in everything you print, export or copy.
Who this is for, and the trade
None of this is really about markdown. It's about who ends up reaching for an editor built this way, and it's rarely for a dramatic reason.
It's the therapist typing up a session note while it's still fresh. The consultant drafting a memo under an NDA they take seriously. The engineer writing the internal design doc for a system the company hasn't announced yet, and would rather not explain to a stranger's server. The journalist keeping notes on a source who asked not to be named. The person who just doesn't love the idea of a diary entry being quietly read by something they never agreed to let read it.
None of these people are unusual, and none of them are being paranoid. They noticed that every extra server between them and their own words is one more thing that can be breached, subpoenaed or quietly sold — and that "this stays on my machine" stopped being the default almost everywhere else. It's worth being honest about the cost of that choice: Marqora won't sync your notes between machines for you, because there's no service in the loop to do it, and if a laptop dies without a backup, that loss is real. In exchange, what you write here belongs to you the way a piece of paper does — no server holding a copy for someone to breach, because there's no server; no account to close, because there was never one to open.
Go back to that ordinary moment — the file you weren't ready to show anyone yet. Close the laptop. The document is exactly where you left it, on the machine you left it on. It got there without asking anyone's permission, and without telling anyone it exists.
That's the whole idea. Not a bigger feature set, not a faster sync, not a smarter cloud. A room where what you write stays put — built for the people who already knew they wanted one.
What nobody expects is how quickly it stops being a decision. The document you were careful about is why you opened it; a week later it's open for the release notes, the shopping list, and the note to yourself nobody will ever read. Somewhere in there it stopped being the place you put what you'd rather not put in a cloud, and became the place you write.
Nothing you write here goes anywhere else.