A mindmap tool for your terminal. Fast. Fluid. Keyboard-native. Built for thinkers who live in the CLI.

mdbub lets you build and manage mindmaps directly in your terminal. It's designed for speed-of-thought capture, with two streamlined modes: one for lightning-fast inline edits, and one for full-screen TUI visual editing.

Unlike plain Markdown, mdbub lets you structure your ideas—navigate, fold, tag, and rework them instantly, using only your keyboard.

• Quick Mode: Instant mini-editor for rapid note capture.
• Edit Mode: Full-screen terminal interface for folding, searching, tagging.
• Keyboard-native UX: Everything is hotkey driven. Customize to your liking.
• Pipe Mode (coming soon): Interoperable with the rest of your CLI stack.
• Zero-mouse flow: It's not just fast. It feels alive under your fingertips.

mdbub tech_idea.mdbub

It looks like this:

【AI-Driven Co...】 > 【Core Concept】 > 【Voice Intera...】
● Voice Interaction should be two-way
└─ No children

Just start typing to edit the label on a node; or hit enter to add a sibling; or hit tab to add a child.

If you add an id in the text, like this: [id:design/api], you can comeback later directly to that node with a deeplink: mdbub tech_idea.mdbub#design/api

While you work:

• Add inline #tags to make them easier to find or filter
• Add inline @key:value maps to track metadata of nodes
• Add inline [id:something] ids to later link

# PyPI (all platforms)
pip install mdbub
# or
pipx install mdbub

# Homebrew (macOS)
brew tap collabinator/homebrew-tap
brew install mdbub  # (won't need tap when available in Homebrew Core)

# Chocolatey (Windows)
choco install mdbub  # (coming soon)

mdbub --about

While we work on getting into the main package repositories, you can install via:

# Development version
pip install git+https://github.com/collabinator/mdbubbles.git

Want to help shape the future of CLI-based structured thinking?

• Open issues
• Start a discussion
• Follow the roadmap

mdbub is for people who think in trees. Who sketch in lists. Who live in the terminal. And who know that a good idea starts fast—and needs space to grow.

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.