vtree is a free online YAML tool — parse, explore, explain, lint and convert YAML with no account, no sign-up, and nothing ever leaving your browser.
YAML (“YAML Ain't Markup Language”) is a human-friendly text format for structured data. It represents the same things JSON does — maps, lists, strings, numbers, booleans, null — but uses indentation instead of braces, allows comments, and adds features like anchors and multi-document streams. It's the usual choice for configuration: CI pipelines, Kubernetes manifests, Docker Compose, Ansible.
Yes — the YAML Tree View is the default way to explore a YAML document in vtree: a collapsible, indented view of every key and value, with search and inline editing, alongside YAML-specific help like the Explain and Lint tabs. Switching your YAML to Tree View is automatic — paste it and it's already there.
Yes — the YAML Graph View draws the same document as a node-link diagram instead of a list, so you can see the overall shape of a config file at a glance or trace a reference across a large document without scrolling. Available for YAML the same way it is for JSON, TOML, and XML — switching your YAML to Graph View is one click on the Graph tab, no separate conversion step.
Yes — Download as PNG (a high-resolution, 2x-scale image) or Download as SVG (a scalable vector you can drop straight into a design tool or a doc) from the toolbar above the graph. The file is named after your document, e.g. config-graph.svg, and the background matches whichever theme you're using.
No. Parsing, explaining, linting and converting all run in your browser. YAML config often contains hostnames, credentials and infrastructure detail — none of it is sent to a server, and clearing your browser data removes anything stored locally.
They model the same data. JSON is compact and unambiguous thanks to its punctuation; YAML is easier to write and comment but its implicit typing and indentation can hide bugs — no read as a boolean, a version string like 1.10 losing its trailing zero, a stray tab. vtree lets you work in either and convert between them.
It walks the document and annotates the constructs people find confusing: anchors (&name) and every alias (*name) that points back to them, merge keys (<<) that splice one map into another, multi-document streams separated by ---, block scalars (| and >), and explicit tags. Each annotation is tied to the line it came from.
Common YAML mistakes that still parse successfully: values like no, off, yes or y that some parsers coerce to booleans, unquoted numbers that lose precision or a leading zero, duplicate keys where the last one silently wins, and tab characters used for indentation. Each finding points at a line so you can decide whether to quote it.
Yes — the Convert to JSON button turns the current document into pretty-printed JSON in a new tab. Multi-document YAML becomes a JSON array, one element per document.
Yes. A stream with --- separators is parsed into an array, one entry per document — the shape most YAML tooling uses — and the Explain tab marks where each document begins.
Yes — open both in tabs and use the Diff tab. Because YAML and JSON parse to the same data model, vtree diffs the structures directly, so you can check whether a YAML config still matches the JSON an API returns.
Yes — the same simplified layout as the JSON tool: a Response/Result toggle instead of a side-by-side split, with Tree, Table, Explain, Lint and Validate available.
Yes, vtree is free with no account or sign-up required.