Run all markdown cells on startup

[zilto]

Description

I use Markdown to structure my notebook and facilitate navigation via the table of content sidebar. However, I most often use execution mode on startup: lazy to avoid costly computations. In this case, Markdown cells are not executed and don't appear in the table of content for navigation.

Example

Suggested solution

The execution mode on startup: lazy executes all markdown cells (and maybe reusable functions?) given they should be top-level nodes with no side-effect. It seem to fit what "lazy" means.

Then, on startup: off would execute exactly nothing, i.e., the current on startup: lazy behavior

Are you willing to submit a PR?

• Yes

Alternatives

No response

Additional context

No response

[mscolnick]

We've gotten a similar request. I think for compatibility, it might be better to add on startup: markdown-only.

The problem is if the import marimo as mo block also contains some code that you don't want executed.

[akshayka]

We could do something hacky, but which may work:

1. Run pure markdown cells automatically (no references except for mo)
2. Before running them, just imperatively run import marimo as mo so the markdown cells actually run (as long as import marimo as mo is somewhere in the notebook, we have this data statically). This would get around the issue of running code in the import marimo as mo block that you don't want executed.

This way we wouldn't need to add a markdown-only option, and instead this could be the default behavior for on startup: off.

EDIT: @dmadisetti notes we don't even need to import marimo into the kernel, the rendering can happen outside of the user's runtime.

[odanoburu]

I think I've made a similar a request in the past; this is very useful for teaching, because:

• I don't want the students to see the result before I ask them what they expect to happen when I run the cell, so I don't want to run all cells;
• but I also don't want to click on every markdown cell in order to run them, so I don't want marimo to not run any cells.

So I second this request!