PouncePad

A simple, fast, native macOS text editor and file viewer — real syntax highlighting, live Markdown & Mermaid preview, a built-in viewer for PDF, Office, iWork, images, audio, video & HTML, a keyboard-drivable file browser, crash-safe tabs, and a Claude Code channel built right in. No plugins.

Install with Homebrew See the channel

brew trust pounceapps/tap
brew install --cask pounceapps/tap/pouncepad

A viewer, not just an editor

Click a file. See it. No plugins.

The things you'd install a dozen VS Code extensions for — previewing a PDF, an image, a spreadsheet, a clip — just work. Browse a folder in the tree and each file renders as you click.

Documents

PDF · Word (.docx/.doc/.rtf) · Excel (.xlsx) · Apple iWork (Pages/Numbers/Keynote). PowerPoint & legacy Office render with LibreOffice; anything else opens in its default app.

Images

png, jpg, gif, bmp, tiff, heic, webp, svg, ico — shown on a transparency checkerboard.

Audio & video

mp3, wav, m4a, aac, ogg, flac, aiff and mp4/mov/m4v/webm — native players, right in the tab.

HTML — safely

Renders static by default; a page you approve runs its scripts in a sandbox walled off from the app. Preview a mockup or a game you built.

A real file browser

SVG file-type icons, keyboard navigation with live preview, type-to-filter, and ephemeral tabs so browsing never piles up clutter.

Claude can drive it

Over the MCP channel, Claude can open a document into the viewer for you — preview_file. Script-approval stays yours alone.

Why PouncePad

Why you'd use it.

A scratch editor that opens instantly and never loses your work — with Claude able to read and edit the file you're in.

A scratch pad that respects your work

Instant launch as a TextEdit/Notepad replacement, but with real syntax highlighting for ~30 languages, crash-safe tabs (every keystroke saved to disk), and open from the CLI or Finder.

Markdown & Mermaid, live

Write notes, docs and diagrams with a live preview — Markdown and Mermaid render as you type, while plain text stays plain.

A viewer, not just an editor

Click a PDF, Word doc, spreadsheet, image, audio or video file and it just shows — no plugins to hunt for. Browse a whole project from the tree and arrow through files, each previewing as you go.

Claude, inside your editor

The built-in Claude channel lets you ask about the open file and have Claude edit it in place — no copy-paste, no leaving the app.

Features

Everything you want in a scratch editor — nothing you don't.

~30 languages

CodeMirror 6 highlighting for Go, Python, JS/TS, Rust, SQL, JSON, YAML, HTML and more — themed to the editor palette.

Markdown + Mermaid

A live preview pane renders Markdown and Mermaid diagrams as you type; plain text stays plain.

Crash-safe tabs

Every keystroke is saved to disk — unsaved scratch buffers come back after a restart. Clearing history never deletes files.

CLI & Finder

pouncepad file.md from the terminal, or set it as the default editor for .md/.json/.txt/… in Finder’s Open With.

A dozen themes

Rider, One Dark, Dracula, Nord, Solarized, GitHub, Monokai, Ayu and more — light and dark.

Claude channel

A built-in MCP channel: type a question and Claude Code answers inside the app — and can edit your files.

Document & media viewer

PDF, Word, Excel, Apple iWork (Pages/Numbers/Keynote), images, audio and video — plus HTML — render right in the app. PowerPoint too, with LibreOffice. No plugins.

A real file browser

SVG file-type icons, keyboard navigation with live preview, type-to-filter, and ephemeral tabs so browsing never piles up clutter.

Run HTML — only if you say so

Pages render static by default; approve one and its scripts run in a sandbox walled off from the app. Preview an interactive page or a game you built, safely.

Sync via 1Password

Push this Mac's theme, fonts and AI keys into a 1Password vault, then pull them onto another Mac and pick exactly which items to apply — your editor looks and behaves the same everywhere. Secrets stay encrypted in 1Password; nothing changes locally until you confirm.

A closer look

Syntax highlighting, themes, and a settings app that feels native.

PouncePad syntax highlighting — Multi-language syntax highlighting, following your theme.

PouncePad theme picker — A full theme gallery — the whole app recolors instantly.

PouncePad about screen — Native full-screen settings, with an About that shows what’s inside.

PouncePad MCP / Claude setup — Two-command setup to connect Claude Code, with a live connection status.

PouncePad Settings → Sync with push and pull to 1Password — Settings → Sync — push your theme, fonts and keys to 1Password, pull them on another Mac.

The Claude channel

Type in the app. Claude answers — and edits — right there.

PouncePad has no built-in LLM. Instead it opens a channel to Claude Code running in your terminal: your message is pushed to Claude (no polling), Claude replies in the chat panel, and it can read and rewrite the file you’re working on through the app’s MCP tools.

Claude replying in the PouncePad chat panel — Claude answering in the chat panel — Markdown, code blocks and all.

describe this code

topcats.go ranks cats by remaining lives — a Cat struct, a topCats() sort, and a main that prints a ranked list. Want me to add a tags column?

yes

Done — edited topcats.go live (the tab’s now unsaved •): added the strings import and a [tags] column. That’s the channel driving the editor, not just chatting.

Install

One line, notarized, updates via brew.

macOS 13+ (Apple Silicon).

brew tap pounceapps/tap
brew trust pounceapps/tap
brew install --cask pouncepad

Or download a notarized .dmg from pounceapps/downloads. To wire up the Claude channel, see Settings → MCP / Claude in the app, or the wiki.