Loom Md Tables

Markdown Table Formatting

Utility for fixing markdown table alignment and spacing. Normalizes column widths, ensures consistent padding, and preserves alignment markers.

Quick Examples

# Preview fixed output
python fix-md-tables.py document.md

# Fix in-place
python fix-md-tables.py document.md -i

Common Patterns

Status tables:

| Stage | Status    | Branch     |
| ----- | --------- | ---------- |
| build | Complete  | loom/build |
| test  | Executing | loom/test  |

Configuration tables:

| Option     | Default | Description           |
| ---------- | ------- | --------------------- |
| timeout    | 300     | Session timeout (sec) |
| auto_merge | false   | Enable auto merging   |

Right-aligned numbers (script preserves the ---: marker but left-aligns and right-pads the cell text — GFM still renders these right-aligned when displayed):

| Item  | Count | Total |
| ----- | ----: | ----: |
| Files | 42    | 500   |
| Lines | 1,234 | 5,000 |

Features

• Aligns each column to its widest cell (separators get a minimum width of 3)
• Single-space padding; cell content is always left-aligned and right-padded (ljust) regardless of the alignment marker
• Preserves the alignment marker in the separator row (:---, :---:, ---:), so GFM rendering still honors it
• Uses the header's column count: short body rows gain empty trailing cells and excess body cells are dropped, matching GFM rendering
• Preserves a shared zero-to-three-space Markdown indent and recognizes GFM one-cell body rows without a pipe
• Inserts a blank line before and after each table when missing

Invocation

The script lives in this skill's directory, so pass its path (or copy it to the target dir). allowed-tools permits Bash(python *); invoke via python, not ./.

python /path/to/skills/loom-md-tables/fix-md-tables.py FILE.md      # preview to stdout
python /path/to/skills/loom-md-tables/fix-md-tables.py FILE.md -i   # -i or --in-place: rewrite

⚠ A pipe-separated header must be immediately followed by a valid GFM delimiter row with the same number of cells and indent. The utility preserves escaped \| inside cells and ignores fenced code, raw HTML blocks, four-space indented code, and lines starting another block such as a blockquote or list item. Pipe-looking prose without a delimiter row is left unchanged. Leading/trailing pipes are optional under GFM; the normalized output uses them for readability. Preview the diff when a table sits inside a complex nested container.

Alignment Markers

Verify before done

• Ran preview (no -i) first and eyeballed the diff before rewriting in place.
• Separator markers (:---, ---:, :---:) survived; alignment intent intact.
• Header and delimiter counts/indents match; pipe-looking prose plus fenced/raw-HTML examples were intentionally left unchanged.