---
title: "snarkdown: The 1KB Markdown Renderer That Does Just Enough"
description: "Marked is 50KB. markdown-it is 100KB. snarkdown is 1KB and handles 90% of markdown use cases."
date: 2025-12-09
slug: "snarkdown-1kb-markdown-renderer"
tags: ["javascript", "markdown", "performance", "libraries", "minimalism"]
---

I want to share a tiny markdown library I found: snarkdown. It's 1KB and does just enough.

Most projects reach for Marked (50KB) or markdown-it (100KB). For displaying blog post summaries or user comments, you don't need full CommonMark compliance. You need bold, italic, links, lists, code blocks. That's it.

snarkdown is 1KB and renders exactly that.

## What It Does (and Doesn't)

Supports: bold, italic, strikethrough, links, lists, code blocks, headers. The basics.

```markdown
**bold** and _italic_
[link](https://example.com)
`code`

- list item

# heading
```

Doesn't support: tables, images, footnotes, reference-style links. If you need those, use Marked. If you don't, why ship 50KB?

## How to Use It

One function. Input markdown, get HTML:

```javascript
import snarkdown from "https://esm.sh/snarkdown@2.0.0";

const markdown = "**Bold** and *italic* with [links](https://example.com)";
const html = snarkdown(markdown);
```

Load from CDN, no build step. Here's how I use it in my newsletter digester:

```javascript
import snarkdown from "https://esm.sh/snarkdown@2.0.0";

export default function Posts() {
  return html`
    <div dangerouslySetInnerHTML=${{ __html: snarkdown(post.summary) }} />
  `;
}
```

AI-generated summaries come back with basic markdown. snarkdown renders them instantly.

My total frontend: Preact (3KB) + HTM (1KB) + snarkdown (1KB) = 5KB. Compare that to React + markdown-it = 275KB.

See it in action: [github.com/mfyz/newsletter-blog-digester](https://github.com/mfyz/newsletter-blog-digester) - check `src/public/pages/Posts.js`. One line of code. That's it.