What XJ-Editor goes after is not prettier Markdown rendering. It goes after the small irritation of writing a document while switching between four or five windows.

It is a Windows desktop editor built with Electron that gathers writing, preview, document conversion, AI assistance, version control and a terminal into one window. The author is blunt about how it was made: the code was written by AI, and his role is closer to product manager and tester, asking for features, using them, and changing whatever feels awkward. The project reached 1.0.0 in early 2026-11 and the repository still receives commits daily.

Editing and preview without a split-screen shuffle

Markdown, HTML, JSON and plain text all open, and edit, split and preview modes switch with one click. What writers usually bolt on is already there: Mermaid, PlantUML and Chart.js render as diagrams, KaTeX handles formulas, and GitHub-style callouts and YAML front matter become information cards of their own. Those pieces normally arrive as plugins that then need configuring; here they are the default behaviour.

Images, PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and archives can be viewed inline, and older doc files scale themselves to fit. For work that is mostly writing with the occasional reference lookup, fewer windows means fewer interruptions.

Document conversion that never leaves the machine

This is the most distinctive part. Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenDocument, RTF, EPUB, CSV and PDF convert to Markdown in one action through a WebAssembly binding of the anydoc engine, running inside the Electron main process: no network request is made and the file does not leave the machine. Output follows GitHub-flavoured Markdown, CSV declares its format explicitly, and everything else is detected.

Images embedded in a document are extracted, written to a sibling asset folder in local mode, or uploaded and replaced by links in image-host mode, with an automatic fallback to local when an upload fails. Errors are also distinguished: a scanned PDF reports that OCR is needed first, encrypted documents and structurally damaged ones each get their own message instead of one vague conversion failure.

Reading a PDF and taking notes should not be two programs

Anyone writing documentation reads papers, specifications and other people's manuals. The usual arrangement is a reader in one window and a note app in another, switching over to type a passage by hand and losing the place after a few rounds. XJ-Editor embeds PDF as content of the same rank as Markdown, and pages accept highlights and annotations.

Marks travel with the file and stay local, with no cloud account involved, so copying the file to another machine keeps them. Read on the left and write excerpts in a split pane on the right, and convert the whole PDF into editable Markdown when needed, opened automatically when it finishes. The chain is much shorter, and reading and writing share one context instead of being stitched together from screenshots and memory.

AI and version control in the sidebar

The AI is a built-in assistant rather than a web page bolted on: presets cover several common model services at home and abroad, plus locally running options. Select a passage and polish, expand, translate, proofread or ask for a diagram; sessions are multiple, replies stream, and the current file can be cited as context. The author admits the AI side is a simple integration for now, with deeper use still being added.

Git becomes a sidebar panel: changed files at a glance, line-by-line diffs on click, and history, branch switching, stash and clone all inside the panel. The neatest part is asking the AI to write a commit message from the diff, which turns a pile of edits into one sentence to read, adjust and commit. With the built-in terminal alongside, editing, running scripts, reading diffs and committing never require leaving the window.

What to accept at this stage

Version 1.0.0 ships as a Windows desktop build only, with no macOS or Linux version. It is a new project maintained by one person, and the repository has no licence file yet: the author calls it open source, but strictly the terms of use are not written down, so anyone who cares about licensing may want to wait.

The installer is large, which is the usual Electron tax. The built-in terminal drives the system shell, so full-screen command line programs run, but after a while window resizing and stacked panes still feel cramped. It reads as an early release that gathered the common capabilities first: coverage is there, polishing continues.

The value is not in any single feature being strongest, but in pulling the scattered, window-switching actions of writing into one surface. For anyone who writes Markdown daily, reads PDFs and wants version control nearby, what it saves is attention rather than a handful of clicks.