# Hand them the PDF, not the Markdown. An agent finishes a document, you review and revise it, and then someone outside engineering needs to read it too — a manager, a client, someone on another team. They don't need to know what `##` or a pipe table means. Export to PDF and hand them that instead. **Export the reviewed document to PDF and send that file.** It opens in anything, needs no Markdown knowledge and no install, and looks the way you saw it in the preview — diagrams, tables and formatting included. ## Why not just send the .md file A raw `.md` file opened in a plain text editor shows the marks, not the page: `#` for a heading, `**` around bold text, a fenced block for a Mermaid diagram that isn't drawn. Someone who doesn't write Markdown doesn't read any of that as intended, and asking them to install a viewer first is asking a lot for one document. ## Why not a screenshot A screenshot freezes one screen's worth of a document that may run to several pages, can't be searched or selected, and reads worse once it's compressed and forwarded a few times. A PDF keeps the text, the diagrams and the page breaks intact, at any length. ## What a PDF gets you - Opens in whatever the recipient already has — Preview, a browser, Acrobat, their phone — no Markdown tool required. - Mermaid diagrams are drawn in, not left as code; code blocks keep their highlighting. - Page breaks are chosen so a heading doesn't land alone at the bottom of a page, and a table or diagram isn't split across two. - The same file whether it came from the MarsDawn app or the free command line — see [Markdown to PDF](/markdown-to-pdf/) for that walk-through. ## Next - The themes and layouts the export can come from: [preview themes and PDF export](/themes/). - Export from a script or an agent instead of the app: [marsdawn for agents](/cli/agents/). - Why a person still needs to read the document first: [the case for review](/reviewing-ai-output/). ## More - [MarsDawn](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/index.md): A native Mac Markdown editor with live preview, Mermaid diagrams and PDF export, built for reading what AI agents write. Coming soon to the Mac App Store. - [Your writing stays on your Mac](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/yours/index.md): MarsDawn has no account, no sync and no cloud. Your Markdown documents stay on your Mac, in the files and folders you choose. - [Try free, pay once](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/pay-once/index.md): MarsDawn is free to download. Try everything for 14 days, then unlock it once for USD 4.99. No subscription, no account. - [PDF export](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/pdf/index.md): Export Markdown as a PDF or print it on your Mac, with Mermaid diagrams and highlighted code. Page breaks avoid splitting short code blocks and tables. - [A Mac app](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/native/index.md): A Markdown editor that is a real Mac app: native windows and tabs, autosave, version history, Quick Look in Finder and a text editor that behaves like a Mac. - [What MarsDawn doesn't do](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/limits/index.md): No sync, no iPhone or iPad app, no plugins, no accounts. Four built-in themes. Know before you buy. - [Support](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/support/index.md): Get help with MarsDawn, the Markdown editor for macOS. - [Privacy Policy](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/privacy/index.md): MarsDawn does not collect personal data. Your documents and settings stay on your Mac. - [View Markdown on a Mac](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/view-markdown-on-mac/index.md): A .md file is plain text with formatting marks in it. Here is how to read it rendered on a Mac: as a PDF with the free marsdawn command-line tool today, and in the MarsDawn app, coming soon to the Mac App Store. - [Markdown to PDF](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/markdown-to-pdf/index.md): Convert Markdown to PDF on a Mac with the free marsdawn command-line tool. Install it with Homebrew and run one command: tables, math, Mermaid and code. - [MacMD Viewer vs. MarsDawn](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/vs/macmd-viewer/index.md): MacMD Viewer renders Markdown read-only for USD 19.99. MarsDawn edits and previews side by side, free to try then USD 4.99 once on the Mac App Store. - [Command Line](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/cli/index.md): The free marsdawn command-line tool for Mac: export Markdown to PDF from a shell, a script or an LLM agent, with JSON output. Install it with Homebrew. - [marsdawn for agents](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/cli/agents/index.md): A reference for AI agents and scripts that call marsdawn to turn Markdown into PDF: commands, JSON output, schemas, exit codes and requirements. - [Agent skill](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/cli/skill/index.md): One file your coding agent loads to install marsdawn, check it works, export Markdown to PDF and read the JSON result. - [MCP server](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/cli/mcp/index.md): marsdawn has no AI model of its own, so it doesn't matter which agent wrote the Markdown. Call it from the CLI, a skill file, or the marsdawn-mcp MCP server: all three run the same export. - [Token-efficient review](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/token-efficient-review/index.md): A person reviews the rendered page in MarsDawn, never read back into the agent's context. The tool call itself returns a compact JSON result, not the rendered content, so calling it is cheap too. - [Viewing Markdown elsewhere vs. MarsDawn](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/vs/markdown-preview-tools/index.md): How MarsDawn compares to reading Markdown in VS Code's built-in preview, a browser extension, or Claude Desktop's file preview: what each renders, and what it takes to open one file. - [Preview themes and PDF export](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/themes/index.md): Four preview themes, each with a light and dark palette, and one PDF/print export that matches whichever you're in. More importable themes, and a gallery to share your own, are planned. - [Why AI output still needs a human reader](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/reviewing-ai-output/index.md): AI-written Markdown still has to be understood by a person, not trusted on sight. MarsDawn pairs the rendered page with the source, and draws Mermaid diagrams and KaTeX math, so structure is legible at a glance. - [繁體中文](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/zh-hant/sharing-exported-pdfs/index.md): 把 agent 寫的 Markdown 輸出成 PDF，交給不寫 Markdown、也不會安裝任何東西的同事。不用懂語法，不用裝 app，也不需要帳號就能打開。 - [简体中文](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/zh-hans/sharing-exported-pdfs/index.md): 把 agent 写的 Markdown 导出成 PDF，交给不写 Markdown、也不会安装任何东西的同事。不用懂语法，不用装 app，也不需要账号就能打开。 - [日本語](https://marsdawn.southern-light.dev/ja/sharing-exported-pdfs/index.md): エージェントの書いた Markdown を PDF に書き出し、Markdown を読まず何もインストールしない同僚に渡します。構文もアプリもアカウントも、開くのに一切不要です。