Beautify your GitHub README with elegant Medium article widgets

Instead of boring markdown links, use Elegant Medium Article Widgets for your GitHub README.

void perception(){

I wanted to reference my Medium article — the one where I had poured the buildup, the theory, the quiet chaos behind a project I pushed to GitHub.

The obvious way?

Copy the link. Paste it into a markdown anchor.

It’s clean and functional but ….dead.

Just a blue underlined line of text — pretending to carry weight.

It doesn’t let the mind see what the eyes once saw.

But when I do the same thing in Notion, something different happens.

The link transforms.

Rounded corners, a title that feels like an entry point, not just text and the thumbnail already whispering quietly — this is what lies inside.

So I did what everyone does.

I raised the lid, and the screen flashed to life, filling the dim room of problems with that familiar blue light of borrowed solutions.

I opened Google.

And galloped on the keyboard :

“How to add Medium articles as widgets on GitHub README”

And I found it.

I found it

But it wasn’t mine.

There was a way — an anchor tag, a widget, a clean solution.

But it came with a quiet betrayal.

It always fetched the latest article.

The moment you publish a new article on medium — the past dissolves, replaced without consent.

That wasn’t what I wanted.

I didn’t want something alive, but wanted something faithful.

A link that doesn’t forget.

So I searched again.

Couldn’t find one, so I built one.

And deployed it on vercel.

}

theTheory(){

Here’s how you use it.

URL format :

https://medium-widget-api.vercel.app/medium/@username/article-slug

Embed in markdown :

<a target="_blank" href="https://medium.com/@username/article-slug">
  <img
    src="https://medium-widget-api.vercel.app/medium/@username/article-slug"
    alt="Read Article on Medium"
  />
</a>

Or with cache busting parameter :

<a target="_blank" href="https://medium.com/@username/article-slug">
  <img
    src="https://medium-widget-api.vercel.app/medium/@username/article-slug?v=1"
    alt="Read Article on Medium"
  />
</a>

Replace @username and article-slug with your’s and you get such elegant widget in your README :

Not a link. But a presence.

If you’re okay with the “latest article auto-update” behavior, this approach already exists (thanks to Iman Tumorang). Follow this ***link.***

}

return {

This is small. Almost insignificant if you look at it too quickly.

But it’s the first thing I’ve put out that feels like it might quietly sit in other people’s work — just… being useful.

I think this will benifit the users who want to reference their medium writings in markdown — but not the traditional, boring blue text way.

If you build with it, break it, improve it — I would love to hear that.

Because sometimes, the ideas that feels delusional today might change the way we work with things tomorrow.

***github.com/forbiddenscholar/medium-widget-api***

}