Jean-Pierre

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RFD 004: Streaming Markdown Parser and Terminal Renderer in jp_md ​

Summary ​

jp_md contains two custom components alongside comrak: a block-boundary detector (Buffer) for streaming segmentation, and a terminal renderer for escape-sequence-aware styled output. This ADR records why we maintain both and why we chose comrak over pulldown-cmark.

Context ​

JP streams LLM responses token-by-token. To render markdown progressively, we need to know where one block ends and the next begins — before the full response has arrived. Neither comrak nor pulldown-cmark supports incremental parsing; both require the complete input upfront.

A CommonMark document is a sequence of block-level elements, and a single block is a valid document. So if we can segment the stream into individual blocks, any standard parser can handle each one independently. Buffer does this segmentation: it buffers incoming chunks and drains them as soon as it recognizes a complete block. It implements just enough of the CommonMark block-level grammar (headings, fenced/indented code, HTML blocks, paragraph interruption rules) to detect boundaries — inline parsing is left entirely to comrak.

Fenced code blocks are the exception to one-block-at-a-time buffering: Buffer streams the opening fence, each content line, and the closing fence as separate events. This allows line-by-line syntax highlighting without waiting for the full block. The trade-off is that an unclosed fence causes all subsequent content to render as code. Buffering the full block would be strictly worse: the user waits for the entire remaining response only for the parser to discover the fence was never closed.

Once a block is segmented, it needs to be rendered as styled terminal output. The initial approach injected Node::Raw ANSI escape nodes into comrak's AST (comrak#743), then used comrak's CommonMark formatter for output. This broke in two ways: comrak's line wrapping counts escape sequences as visible characters, producing incorrect wrap points; and when a wrap happened between an opening and closing escape sequence, the unclosed sequence caused incorrect rendering. The current terminal renderer is ANSI-aware — it counts only visible characters for wrapping, and closes open sequences before a line break and re-opens them after.

Since we no longer manipulate comrak's AST, switching to pulldown-cmark is technically possible. However, comrak still offers a built-in CommonMark formatter (format_commonmark) for non-terminal output and a convenient AST. With pulldown-cmark we'd need a separate crate (pulldown-cmark-to-cmark) for the same formatting capability.

Decision ​

We maintain two custom components in jp_md:

  1. Buffer — a block-boundary detector for streaming segmentation.
  2. TerminalRenderer — an ANSI-aware AST walker for styled terminal output with correct line wrapping and sequence management.

We use comrak for parsing (AST construction) and non-terminal formatting. We choose comrak over pulldown-cmark for its built-in CommonMark formatter and AST convenience.

Quality goals, in priority order: minimally buffered (time-to-first-token), streaming (tokens/second), well-formatted (themed terminal output), correct (spec-faithful). Correctness is last deliberately — we prefer showing content with potentially wrong styling over making the user wait.

Consequences ​

  • Buffer and comrak must agree on block boundaries. If they diverge, the affected block renders incorrectly and damage may cascade until the parser state self-corrects. The existing proptest fuzz suite verifies Buffer's self-consistency (chunked vs. whole-document), but does not yet cross-validate against comrak's block boundaries — that is a potential next step.
  • We maintain ~400 lines of block-level grammar that partially overlaps with comrak's parser. This is the cost of streaming capability no existing crate provides.
  • An unclosed fenced code block misrenders all subsequent content as code. This is an accepted latency-over-correctness trade-off.

References ​

  • crates/jp_md/src/buffer.rs — block-boundary detector
  • crates/jp_md/src/format.rs — comrak-based formatter
  • crates/jp_md/src/render.rs — terminal renderer (comrak AST walker)
  • comrak
  • pulldown-cmark