Your notebooks deserve better than plain markdown.
Markdown documentation can be dull and boring (and ignored in some cases...), the same used to apply to markdown content in notebook cells. What if your notebook documentation was as polished as the engineering behind it, with engaging and interactive content? Enter Sandbox Magic...
Sandbox Magic is an open-source collection of copy-paste-ready patterns that transform Databricks %md-sandbox cells into rich, interactive, presentation-quality content - no external tools, no widgets, no cluster required.
Ditch the Slide Deck
Here's the real unlock: you don't need PowerPoint or Google Slides anymore.
Think about how presentations typically work on a data platform team. Someone builds a pipeline, then switches to a completely different tool to create slides about that pipeline - re-drawing the architecture, re-typing the config, manually screenshotting outputs. The slides are stale and forgotten before the meeting ends.
With these patterns, the notebook is the presentation. Architecture reviews, sprint demos, stakeholder updates, platform governance walkthroughs, onboarding sessions - all of it can live in a Databricks notebook that:
- Stays current - the diagrams and content sit next to the actual code, so they evolve together
- Runs live - show a stakeholder the real pipeline output in the same notebook that explains the architecture
- Needs no extra tooling - no slide software licenses, no design skills, no "can someone share the deck?"
- Is version-controlled - every change is tracked, every version is recoverable, every review is a PR
A notebook with styled admonitions, inline architecture diagrams, interactive cards, and vendor icons doesn't just document your platform - it presents it. And unlike a slide deck gathering dust in someone's Google Drive, a notebook in your workspace is always one click away from the live environment.
Examples Available
The Sandbox Magic repo includes examples and code snippets for:
- Flip cards
- Interactive Quiz Widgets
- Diagrams-as-Code
- Styled Code Blocks
- Admonitions
- Images and Carousels
- and more...
Everything renders directly in the notebook - in the workspace, in a dashboard, in a presentation. No compute. No Python. Just markdown cells doing things you didn't know they could do.
Three Patterns Worth Stealing Today
1. Admonitions That Actually Get Read
Walls of text get skimmed. A bright orange warning box with a clear heading? That gets read. Drop these into any notebook to highlight prerequisites, gotchas, breaking changes, or key decisions.
<div style="border-left: 4px solid #e65100; background: #fff3e0;
padding: 16px 20px; border-radius: 4px; margin: 16px 0;">
<strong style="color: #bf360c;">Warning:</strong>
This pipeline truncates the target table on each run.
</div>Eight color-coded variants are ready to copy - info, note, warning, error, success, tip, config, and goal.
2. Architecture Diagrams (as Code) Without Leaving the Notebook
Stop context-switching to draw.io or Lucidchart. With Mermaid (client-side, no data sent externally) or C4-PlantUML, you can define your architecture in plain text and render it inline:
graph LR
A[Raw Sources] -> B[Bronze]
B -> C[Silver]
C -> D[Gold]
D -> E[Dashboard]The diagrams live with the code. When the architecture changes, the diagram updates in the same PR. Version-controlled documentation that never goes stale.
3. Interactive Cards for Training and Onboarding
Building a team onboarding notebook? A platform governance guide? Use accordion cards, flip cards, and category grids to make dense reference material scannable and engaging - no scrolling through 50 bullet points.
Hover-to-reveal flip cards are pure CSS (no JavaScript), and the accordion pattern stores all its data in a simple JavaScript array you can edit in seconds.
FAQ
Does this need a running cluster or warehouse?
No. Everything renders in %md-sandbox cells using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No compute resources are consumed.
Is my diagram data sent anywhere?
Mermaid diagrams render entirely client-side - nothing leaves the browser. If you are using PlantUML diagrams you can send these to your own PlantUML server for rendering for anything sensitive.
Can I use this outside Databricks?
The HTML/CSS/JS patterns work in any environment that renders sandboxed HTML. The %md-sandbox directive is Databricks-specific, but the underlying code is portable.
Get Started in 60 Seconds
- Clone or fork the repo: github.com/stackql-labs/sandbox-magic
- Import the notebooks into your Databricks workspace, this includes the Databricks Free Edition
- Open any notebook - each one is self-contained with working examples
- Copy the patterns you like into your own notebooks
Share Your Hacks!
This is an open-source community project and we want to see what you build. Got a clever pattern? A creative use of %md-sandbox? A better way to do something we've shown here?
Open a PR, file an issue, or just star the repo:
github.com/stackql-labs/sandbox-magic
The best notebook hacks come from practitioners solving real problems. Share yours and help the community level up.
Built and maintained by StackQL Studios. Contributions welcome.
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