AutoOpenReadme

A Sublime Text package.

Open a folder, and its readme opens with it.

No commands, no key bindings, nothing to remember – it just listens for new windows.

What it opens

When you open a new window with a single folder, it looks for the first of these that exists and opens it:

readme.md → readme.txt → readme → notes.md → notes.txt

Where it looks

The folder's root first, then a docs** folder, then a **wiki folder.

Folders are searched in order and each one is checked for every filename before moving on. So a notes.txt in the root beats a readme.md in docs/:

myproject/
  docs/
    readme.md     <- 3rd choice
    notes.txt     <- 4th
  notes.txt       <- 2nd
  readme.md       <- 1st, this is what opens

Both the filenames and the folders are configurable – see below.

Config

Preferences → Package Settings → AutoOpenReadme → Settings, or from the command palette, Preferences: AutoOpenReadme Settings. Defaults:

{
    "files": ["readme.md", "readme.txt", "readme", "notes.md", "notes.txt"],
    "folders": [".", "docs", "wiki"],
    "auto_open_file": ".sublime.autoopen"
}

Matching is whatever your filesystem does, so readme.md already finds README.md on macOS and Windows but not on a case-sensitive filesystem – add README.md to the list explicitly if you work on one. Prefer notes over readmes? Put them first:

{
    "files": ["notes.md", "notes.txt", "readme.md", "readme.txt"]
}

Per-folder override

To open something else – or several things – drop a .sublime.autoopen file in the folder listing one file per line. When that file exists, files and folders are skipped entirely and everything listed gets opened:

# .sublime.autoopen -- lines starting with # are ignored
notes.txt
docs/architecture.md
todo.md

Paths are relative to the folder holding the .sublime.autoopen. Files that don't exist are skipped quietly. Unlike the defaults, this works in multi-folder windows – every folder is checked for its own .sublime.autoopen.

Try it

mkdir ~/tmp/demo
echo "hello world" > ~/tmp/demo/readme.md
subl ~/tmp/demo

The sweet flow…

Combined with the Open URL plugin … create a projects.txt file that you put lines in for each project folder. Then just open this projects.txt file, put the cursor over a line, ctrl+u to “open url” to that folder, and bamn, the folder is opened and the appropriate readme/notes file is opened automatically.

Notes

Only fires on new windows opened with a folder, and only once per window, so it won't fight you if you close the file. Windows that already have files open are left alone.

Acknowledgments

Shout out to @josiahcoad for code reviewing and improvement ideas!

Also

Check out my other Sublime Text packages