🥞 PlanCake

Read Markdown files comfortably and leave notes right where they belong.

PlanCake is a Windows application that shows a Markdown file the way it is meant to be read: real headings, lists, tables and code blocks instead of hash signs and asterisks. Click a paragraph, a list item, a heading, a table row or a code block, type a note, and PlanCake writes it straight into the .md file, right after that block, between a pair of markers ([usernote] … [/usernote] by default). Whoever reads the file next, a colleague or an AI assistant such as Claude, finds your notes exactly where they belong.

Why

AI coding assistants write long implementation plans, often 800 lines of Markdown and more, and ask you to review them. Reading them raw in a code editor is tiring, and commenting on them is worse: you either describe in a chat where each remark belongs ("in Task 4, the third item…") or edit the file by hand and hope the assistant notices.

PlanCake makes both halves comfortable. It renders the plan, so you read it like a document. And it knows which lines of the file each rendered block came from, so leaving a note on a block takes one click, or Enter, and no line numbers. The notes are plain text in the file itself: there is nothing to save, no side file, and any tool that reads the file sees them. When you are done, the assistant reads your notes with the exact blocks they refer to, reworks the plan and removes them.

Like every Oire application, PlanCake is built to work for everyone: everything works equally well with the mouse, from the keyboard alone, and with a screen reader, which reads the rendered plan with its usual heading, list and table navigation instead of spelling out Markdown punctuation.

Installing

Download PlanCake from plancake.oire.dev, in one of two forms:

• The installer sets everything up: it installs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime and the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime if they are missing, and puts plancake on your PATH.
• The portable zip runs from any folder. Keep the empty userdata folder next to plancake.exe, and PlanCake keeps its settings there instead of in %APPDATA%\Oire\PlanCake.

Or install it with winget:

winget install Oire.PlanCake

Requirements:

• Windows 10 or 11, x64
• .NET 10 Desktop Runtime
• Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime (preinstalled on Windows 11)

The installer brings both runtimes along; the portable zip needs them already there.

PlanCake speaks English, Russian, Ukrainian, French, Hebrew (with a right-to-left interface) and German. Press F1 in PlanCake for the full user manual.

Reading and annotating

• Open a file from the command line (plancake plan.md), with Ctrl+O, by dropping it on the window, from the clipboard (Ctrl+V after copying it in File Explorer, or a copied path), or from a link (Ctrl+L; GitHub file links work as they are). A linked file is downloaded to your Downloads folder and opened from there, so your notes go into that copy. Each file gets its own window, and a file is never open in two windows at once.
• Add a note: click a block, or move to it with Alt+Shift+Down Arrow and Alt+Shift+Up Arrow and press Enter. Type the note and press Enter. The note is in the file at once, shown after its block and in the notes list beside the document. Markdown in a note is shown formatted.
• Edit, delete, move between notes: click a note or press Enter on it to edit it; Delete in the notes list removes one; F9 and Shift+F9 go to the next and the previous note. Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y undo and redo everything PlanCake writes.
• Tick off tasks: task-list checkboxes (- [ ]) are real checkboxes; checking one writes [x] on that line of the file, after a question you can turn off in Settings.
• Keep reading while the file changes: when something else changes the file, PlanCake reloads it and keeps your place. It never writes a note over a change you have not seen.

In the file, a note looks like this:

Back up the database before you run the migration.
[usernote]Also back up the uploads folder.[/usernote]

The markers can be changed in Settings (Ctrl+Comma), including a single marker that runs to the end of its line.

The command line

Run with a subcommand, PlanCake works without a window, for scripts and AI assistants:

plancake plan.md                          # open the window with plan.md
plancake list plan.md                     # print every note with the block it follows
plancake list plan.md --json -o notes.json   # the same as JSON, to a file
plancake check plan.md                    # count the notes: exit code 0 with none, 3 with some
plancake clear plan.md                    # remove every note from the file
plancake export plan.md -o plan.html      # a standalone web page with the notes marked
plancake check plan.md --open-marker "!NOTE!" --single-token   # other markers for one run

Errors go to the error output with exit code 1. Output is UTF-8 without a byte order mark. plancake --help and plancake <command> --help list every option.

PlanCake is a Windows application, so an interactive PowerShell or Command Prompt does not wait for it: typed at the prompt, the output may appear after the prompt returns. Piped or captured output is always complete (plancake check plan.md | Out-Host, or cmd /c "plancake check plan.md" when you need $LASTEXITCODE).

A shorter command: pk

To open plans with two letters, add an alias to your shell profile. In PowerShell (the file $PROFILE names):

Set-Alias pk plancake

In bash (~/.bashrc):

alias pk=plancake

Then pk plan.md opens a plan, and pk list plan.md works like plancake list plan.md.

Reviewing a plan with Claude

When Claude writes a plan and asks you to review it, open it with pk plan.md, read it, and leave notes wherever you want changes. Tell Claude you are done: it runs plancake list plan.md --json to read your notes with the blocks they refer to, reworks the plan, removes the notes it has dealt with, and confirms with plancake check plan.md that none is left.

The Debussy plugins for Claude Code have this manual-review step built in. They find notes by the markers in their noteMarkers setting, where a pair is written open...close, so point it at PlanCake's markers in ~/.claude/debussy.json (or the project's .claude/debussy.json):

{
  "noteMarkers": ["[usernote]...[/usernote]"]
}

If you change the markers in PlanCake's settings, change them there too.

Building from source

# once: gettext's msgfmt, which compiles the translations
winget install mlocati.GetText

# before every build: .mo files are build output and are gitignored
./src/PlanCake/locale/scripts/Compile-Translations.ps1 -Strict
dotnet restore
dotnet build
dotnet test
dotnet format            # --verify-no-changes is what CI runs

Skip the translations step and the app falls back to English, and the localization tests fail. CI runs the same steps in this order.

The installer and the portable zip are built with Inno Setup 6:

./installer/Build-Installer.ps1

It compiles the translations, publishes a Release build and writes both to installer/Output/.

See src/PlanCake/locale/README.md for the translation workflow and CLAUDE.md for the conventions this repository follows.

License

PlanCake is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.