mq

mq is an open-source command-line tool created by Takahiro Sato (harehare) that brings jq-style querying to Markdown files. Written in Rust for sub-millisecond performance, it lets developers slice, filter, map, and transform structured Markdown content from the terminal. The project is under active development and released under the MIT License.

What It Is

mq treats Markdown documents as structured data — the same way jq treats JSON — and exposes a query language for extracting headings, code blocks, links, lists, tables, and arbitrary sections. You pipe a Markdown file into mq, write a query expression, and get back filtered or transformed Markdown, HTML, JSON, plain text, or other formats. The tool is especially positioned for LLM workflows, where Markdown is the dominant input and output format for language models.

Core Query Capabilities

The query language supports a rich set of selectors and transformations:

• Node selectors: .h, .h(1), .h(1..3), .code("rust"), .link.url, .[][]
• Filtering: select(contains("name")), select(.code.lang != "js")
• Aggregation: -A flag to aggregate multiple files; pluck(), section::section(), section::by_level()
• Output formats: markdown, HTML, JSON, table, grep, raw, none
• In-place updates: -U / --update flag to rewrite the source file
• Multi-format input: CSV, JSON, YAML, TOML, XML, HCL, CBOR, and more via auto-detected or forced -I flag

Ecosystem and Subcommands

mq ships with a growing set of official subcommands that compose via Unix pipes:

• mq-conv — converts PDF, DOCX, XLSX, and other formats into clean Markdown
• mq-crawler — web crawler that outputs structured Markdown from websites
• mq-tui — terminal Markdown viewer with syntax highlighting
• mq-check — type inference and checking for mq queries
• mq-lsp — Language Server Protocol implementation for IDE completion and hover
• mq-task — task runner that executes code blocks in Markdown files by section title

Custom subcommands can be added by placing any mq-<name> executable in ~/.local/bin/ or PATH.

Installation and Platform Support

mq supports multiple installation paths:

• Quick install script: curl -sSL https://mqlang.org/install.sh | bash
• Cargo: cargo install mq-run from crates.io
• Homebrew: brew install mq (macOS and Linux)
• Pre-built binaries: macOS (Apple Silicon), Linux x86_64/arm64, Windows (MSVC) via GitHub Releases
• Docker: ghcr.io/harehare/mq:0.6.0
• GitHub Actions: official harehare/setup-mq@v1 action

IDE support includes a VSCode extension on the Visual Studio Marketplace and Open VSX Registry, a Neovim plugin, and a Zed extension. Language bindings for Elixir, Python, Ruby, Java, and Go are documented in the official book. A WebAssembly build (mq-web on npm) enables browser-side use, and an online playground at mqlang.org/playground requires no installation.

Update: v0.6.0

The latest release is v0.6.0, published on 2026-06-07. The GitHub repository shows active CI and audit workflows, a codecov integration, and CodSpeed performance benchmarking. The project was created in February 2025 and has accumulated 653 stars and 9 forks as of the latest data. The README notes the project is "under active development," signaling continued feature work and potential breaking changes.