How to generate a document outline from Markdown
Extract just the headings of a long Markdown document to see its skeleton — the fastest way to check structure, spot gaps, and plan a reorganization.
When a document gets long, it's hard to see its shape. The Markdown Outline Generator strips everything except the headings, showing you the document's skeleton at a glance.
What it produces
It collapses the whole document down to its heading hierarchy, indented by level:
Introduction
Background
Goals
Implementation
Architecture
Trade-offs
Conclusion
No body text, no code, no lists — just the structure, so you can read the argument of a 3,000-word document in ten seconds.
Why an outline helps
- Check the flow. Does the order of sections make sense? An outline makes a jumbled structure obvious.
- Spot gaps. A section with no sub-points, or a sudden jump in depth, stands out.
- Plan a rewrite. Before reorganizing, see what you have. Reordering the outline in your head is easier than scrolling the whole doc.
- Brief someone fast. The outline is the summary of what a document covers.
Outline vs table of contents
They look similar but serve different jobs. An outline is a thinking tool — it's for you, to understand and reshape the document. A table of contents is a navigation tool — it's for readers, with clickable links, and it lives in the published document. Use the outline while writing; ship the TOC.
Related tools
To check whether your heading levels are used correctly (no skipping from # to ###), the Heading Hierarchy Checker flags problems. To number the sections, see the Heading Numberer.
Privacy
Everything runs locally; your document stays in the browser.
See the skeleton, fix the structure, then write the flesh.