Browse AI-generated files like an Obsidian vault — HTML, Markdown, JSON, TXT, images, PDF, audio & video, rendered right in your browser. Zero install, read-only, nothing leaves your machine.
🌐 Try the live demo — or download index.html to use it anywhere.
AI tools constantly produce rich files — HTML reports, Markdown notes, JSON dumps, diagrams, images. Obsidian is great for editing Markdown, but it won't render your HTML, and it wants to own your folder as a vault.
Artifact Vault takes the opposite trade: no editing, maximum viewing compatibility. Drop one index.html into any folder, open it in your browser, and everything the AI produced is one click away.
- Download
index.html - Copy it into the root of any folder you want to browse
- Double-click to open it in Chrome or Edge
- Click "📁 Choose Root Folder to Start" and grant read access — done
Each copy of index.html remembers its own authorized folder independently (stored in your browser's IndexedDB), so authorization is a one-time step per folder.
| Category | Formats | Rendering |
|---|---|---|
| Markdown | md markdown mdown mkd |
Fully rendered (marked + highlight.js) |
| HTML | html htm xhtml |
Fully rendered, local CSS inlined, relative images resolved |
| Images | png jpg jpeg gif webp svg avif bmp ico |
Native browser decoding |
| Documents | pdf |
Native PDF viewer |
| Video | mp4 webm ogv mov m4v |
Native playback |
| Audio | mp3 wav ogg flac m4a aac opus |
Native playback |
| Code / Text | json txt log csv yaml xml py js ts sh … |
Syntax highlighted; charset auto-detection (BOM / declared encoding / GBK heuristic) |
| Other | unknown extensions | Sniffed: shown as text, or marked as binary |
Anything Obsidian leaves as raw text or refuses to open renders here.
Media note: the extension names a container — actual playback depends on the codec inside it. H.264/AAC, VP8/VP9, AV1, Opus and FLAC play natively in Chromium; HEVC and ProRes generally don't.
- VS Code-style file tree — lazy loading, drag-to-resize, directory state preserved on refresh
- Zero install, zero CDN — no server, no build, no dependencies to install; all libraries are vendored into the file, so it works fully offline and on locked-down machines where you can't install software
- New-tab view — open any file in a clean standalone tab (no UI chrome), ideal for full-page screenshots; relative images are inlined so the document is fully self-contained
- Locate on disk — jump to the file's containing folder
- Safe by design — previews run in sandboxed iframes with scripts disabled; read-only access only
- Read-only — uses the File System Access API in
readmode; the page cannot write, move, or delete anything - Local only — no telemetry, no accounts, no upload path. Your files never leave the machine
- Zero CDN — marked & highlight.js are vendored inline; the app itself makes no network requests. (Previewed documents may still load external images/CSS they reference — rendered inside the sandbox.)
- Sandboxed previews — HTML/Markdown render inside sandboxed iframes; embedded scripts do not execute
- Permission memory — folder grants are stored locally in IndexedDB, one record per deployed copy
| Browser | Status |
|---|---|
| Chrome / Edge (Chromium) | ✅ Fully supported |
| Firefox | 🚧 Planned (fallback via webkitdirectory) |
| Safari | 🚧 Planned (fallback via webkitdirectory) |
The directory-access API used today (showDirectoryPicker) is Chromium-only. A universal fallback is on the roadmap — see below.
- Vendor marked & highlight.js into the file — fully offline, zero CDN
- Firefox / Safari support via
webkitdirectoryfallback - Obsidian vault syntax:
[[wikilinks]],![[embeds]], callouts - Office formats: docx / xlsx / pptx, EPUB
- Full-text search across the folder
Why not just open the folder in Obsidian? Obsidian renders only Markdown; HTML shows as raw code or a broken embed, and JSON/images/code get no special treatment. It also asks to convert your folder into a vault. Artifact Vault is read-only and renders everything the browser can.
Why copy index.html into each folder?
No server means no install — but browser security requires the page itself to request folder access, and each deployment location keeps its own permission memory. In practice: one click, once per folder.
Can it edit files? No, by design. Read-only is the safety guarantee that lets you point it at folders shared with other tools (Obsidian, editors, sync clients) without risk.
Released under the MIT License.
Bundled libraries (vendored inline): marked v12.0.2 (MIT), highlight.js v11.9.0 (BSD-3-Clause). Full license texts are embedded at the top of each vendored block in index.html.