Simon Willison’s Weblog

Markdown and Math Live Renderer. Another of my tiny Claude-assisted JavaScript tools. This one lets you enter Markdown with embedded mathematical expressions (like $ax^2 + bx + c = 0$) and live renders those on the page, with an HTML version using MathML that you can export through copy and paste.

Here's the Claude transcript. I started by asking:

Are there any client side JavaScript markdown libraries that can also handle inline math and render it?

Claude gave me several options including the combination of Marked and KaTeX, so I followed up by asking:

Build an artifact that demonstrates Marked plus KaTeX - it should include a text area I can enter markdown in (repopulated with a good example) and live update the rendered version below. No react.

Which gave me this artifact, instantly demonstrating that what I wanted to do was possible.

I iterated on it a tiny bit to get to the final version, mainly to add that HTML export and a Copy button. The final source code is here.

# 4:56 am / mathml, tools, markdown, ai, generative-ai, llms, ai-assisted-programming, anthropic, claude, claude-artifacts, claude-3-5-sonnet, prompt-to-app