Write the paper in markdown.
A desktop editor for writing academic papers in markdown, with LaTeX maths, Vega-Lite charts, and Pandoc-style citations rendered live and exported to PDF.
Version 0.6.0 macOS, Apple silicon or Intel Markdown in, PDF out Apache 2.0
Hidden document formats 0
Chart types in the builder 11
Bundled citation styles 5
Languages in the Insert menu 13
Source on the left, the finished page on the right
Maths, charts, diagrams, code and citations all render as you type. Drag the divider, or turn on scroll sync and let the two panes track each other.
Recovery of Signal Sources
The relation E = mc2 sits inside a sentence. The effect was first reported in the original study (see Smith, 2020, pp. 20–22).
Method
def recover(signal, tol=1e-6):
# normalise before inversion
return signal / norm(signal)References
Maths
LaTeX through KaTeX, inline between single dollars and display between double. Malformed maths shows in place rather than blanking the page.
Charts
A fenced vega-lite block becomes a live chart, and a builder writes the spec for you: paste a table, pick a type, insert. Put the cursor back in the block to edit it.
Diagrams
Mermaid flowcharts, sequence diagrams and state machines from a mermaid fence. A diagram that does not parse says what Mermaid objected to.
Figures
A caption makes a figure. Title a chart or a diagram, give an image alt text, and it is numbered automatically in document order — one sequence, with alignment and width set document-wide.
Code
Fenced blocks are highlighted from one shared token table, so a block looks the same as you write it, after it renders, and in the PDF. Fold them all when the paper gets long.
Export
Print the rendered preview — maths, charts, diagrams and references included. Exported PDFs stay light whatever theme you write in, and orientation is remembered.
A BibTeX file and a bracket
Name a .bib
file in the frontmatter and cite with [@key]. Formatting runs
through CSL, the References section is appended for you, and the bibliography is
watched — edit it elsewhere and the preview catches up.
With Zotero and Better BibTeX running, ⌘⇧C opens the picker and inserts keys at the cursor.
--- bibliography: refs.bib csl: apa ---
| You write | You get, in APA |
|---|---|
| [@smith2020] | (Smith, 2020) |
| [@smith2020; @doe2021] | (Smith, 2020; Doe, 2021) |
| @smith2020 | Smith (2020) |
| [-@smith2020] | (2020) |
| [see @smith2020, pp. 33-35] | (see Smith, 2020, pp. 33–35) |
| [@nosuchkey] | [@nosuchkey?] , in place |
Bundled styles: apa, chicago-author-date, ieee, vancouver, harvard.
“Hermes keeps markdown as the source of truth. There is no hidden document format: what you type is a plain .md file you can put in git.”
Every convention the renderer honours — and the ones that silently do nothing. Written to be pasted into an assistant as instructions.
Every feature in order, each section stating what correct looks like. The last section is meant to look broken.
Export the library with “Keep updated”, point the frontmatter at it, then ⌘⇧C. Zotero supplies the key; your .bib resolves it.
Build it, or take the release
Hermes is macOS-focused for now — the paths, menus and print behaviour assume it. Windows and Linux are on the backlog, as is a file-tree sidebar for multi-part documents.
Requirements
| macOS | Apple silicon or Intel |
| Go 1.25+ | Backend |
| Node.js 24+ | Frontend build and tests |
| Wails v3 CLI | Beta, matched to go.mod |
| Zotero | Optional, for citation picking |
From source
cd frontend && npm install && cd .. wails3 dev # hot-reloading dev mode wails3 build # binary into bin/ wails3 package # packaged .app bundle