Typst projects

This page explains what a Typst project needs in Typeward and where it differs from a LaTeX project. A Typst project compiles to a PDF in the same source pane and preview pane, and it uses the same projects library, sidebar, version history, and review tools. For LaTeX projects and their engines, see Choosing a compile engine.

What a Typst project needs

A Typst project compiles through the typst command-line tool, which Typeward never bundles. What you get is keyed to what is already on your machine:

With typst on your PATH, Typst projects compile, preview, and export like LaTeX ones.
Without typst, every Typst compile fails with one message naming the download page, and LaTeX work is unaffected.
With tinymist on your PATH as well, the source pane adds completion, diagnostics, and Outline symbols.
Without tinymist, the source pane and the Outline work on Typeward’s own parsing.

That one binary is the only setup a Typst project requires. The tinymist language server is optional.

Known limitations

These features belong to the LaTeX side of the app, and a Typst project does not get them.

A Typst project has no engine choice, because Typeward always runs the typst command-line tool. System TeX, Tectonic, the build menu, the Engine pills in the sidebar and the status bar, and the Build section of Project settings… are all LaTeX-only.
Typst produces no SyncTeX data. The forward-search command that LaTeX projects bind to Ctrl+J (Cmd+J on macOS) is never registered, and double-clicking the PDF quietly does nothing.
The PDF + annotations export places comments through SyncTeX, so in a Typst project that row stays disabled with the hint “Needs SyncTeX (LaTeX only)”.
The PDF carries no highlight bands for review threads, because Typeward paints those bands through SyncTeX.
Chapter drafts stay LaTeX-only, because Draft this chapter is built on LaTeX’s \includeonly. See Chapter drafts.
The visual editor renders .tex files only. See Visual editing for LaTeX.
The LaTeX label index skips .typ files. \ref and \cite completion with no result cap, Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on macOS) go-to-definition, Rename label, and Find references belong to LaTeX navigation.

Review comments and TODOs themselves work in a Typst project. Threads anchor in the source, so the editor gutter markers and the Review and TODO sidebar tabs behave as usual. Only the bands painted onto the PDF are missing.

The typst command-line tool

The typst command-line tool is the program that turns a .typ file into a PDF. Typeward resolves it against your PATH, never from the project folder, so a typst executable sitting inside a project you opened is never the one that runs. When it is missing, the compile fails with this message:

typst is not on PATH; install it from https://typst.app/download or `cargo install typst-cli`

Install it from the Typst download page or with cargo install typst-cli, then compile again.

First-run onboarding checks for the tool as well. Under “Checking your typesetting setup” a Typst row, subtitled “Only for Typst projects”, carries a “Get it from typst.app” link. The row shows a green Ready badge once the tool is found, and Re-scan probes again after you install it.

Nothing about Typst blocks the rest of onboarding. A machine with no Typst installed can still create LaTeX projects.

New Typst projects

A Typst project starts the same way as a LaTeX one, from Ctrl+N (Cmd+N on macOS) or New project in the projects library. The dialog asks for a format, and it describes the Typst card as “Modern alternative to LaTeX”. Typeward creates a folder under your projects root holding a starter main.typ. That file is a level-one = heading with the project name and one line of body text.

A template start is the other route, through Template in the dialog’s “Or start from:” strip. One built-in Typst template ships, Typst article, with Title and Author variables that substitute into main.typ at create time. Any Typst project can become a reusable template of your own through Save project as template. See Project templates.

Existing folders import as Typst projects too. Import folder and repository clones look for a root file at the top level in this order: main.tex, then the first .tex, then the first .typ. A folder with no .tex and at least one .typ therefore opens as a Typst project.

You can change the main file later in Project settings…, where the picker lists the project’s .typ files and refuses one whose extension does not match the format. See Files and folders.

The compile loop

Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter on macOS) runs Compile Typst, the command the palette lists with the subtitle “typst CLI: native PDF, no LaTeX engine needed”. The compile button in the preview toolbar does the same thing. Ctrl+S (Cmd+S on macOS) runs Save and compile, which saves every dirty buffer and then compiles once. Every compile saves first, so typst always sees what is on screen.

Typst projects follow the global Auto-compile on save setting in Settings → Editor → Compilation, which is off by default. Typst has no per-project build settings, so the global value is the only one in play. With it on, an autosave triggers a recompile as well. See Per-project build configuration for what a LaTeX project can override.

Typeward runs typst compile <main file> from the project root and passes no other flags. The build log opens with the command line it ran, for example:

$ typst compile main.typ

Output streams into the All logs tab while the build runs, and the primary toolbar button turns into a red Stop that kills the process tree. A runaway build is cut off after ten minutes with the log line error: typst timed out after 10 minutes; build aborted.

The PDF lands beside the entry file as <main file stem>.pdf, so main.typ produces main.pdf. Typst always rewrites that file, so Typeward never takes the unchanged-output shortcut and every compile reloads the PDF preview. The viewer restores your scroll offset across the reload, but not the source-line anchoring LaTeX gets from SyncTeX.

Typst diagnostics

A Typst diagnostic is one error:, warning:, or hint: line, usually followed by a location line. Typeward turns them into cards in the Errors, Warnings, and Info tabs of the logs panel, with hints landing under Info.

The location line under the message decides where selecting the card jumps.

Location in the diagnostic	Where the card jumps
A path inside the project	That file and line
An absolute path, which a package or an out-of-project include produces	The main file
No location at all	The main file, line 1

Typeward parses the human-readable output rather than a structured format, so the message text on a card is the wording typst printed. The raw stream is always in All logs.

Editor support

The source pane treats .typ files as Typst throughout: highlighting, the Outline, the format toolbar, comments, grammar checking, and word counts all use the Typst dialect. The highlighter is a compact one rather than a full Typst parser. It colors comments, strings, math runs, headings, function and variable hashes, emphasis, and brackets.

tinymist

Typeward starts tinymist, the Typst language server, when a Typst project opens and the tinymist binary is on your PATH. What that adds:

Completion as you type
Diagnostics as squiggles in the source pane
Document symbols for the Outline

Completion in a Typst project comes from tinymist or not at all. If the binary is missing, the source pane continues without it. There is no error, no notification, and no setting to switch it on: presence on PATH is the only control.

Typeward sends the server no configuration of its own, so it runs on its defaults. Like typst, tinymist is resolved from PATH only, never from the project folder.

The Outline still fills without tinymist. The built-in parser reads = heading lines and nests them by the number of = marks. See Search, replace, and navigation.

The format toolbar and the matching command palette entries insert Typst markup in .typ files. Three of those actions carry a shortcut: Ctrl+B (Cmd+B on macOS) for bold, Ctrl+I (Cmd+I on macOS) for italic, and Ctrl+U (Cmd+U on macOS) for underline. The rest are toolbar buttons and palette commands with no shortcut.

Each action inserts a fixed piece of Typst markup.

Action	Markup inserted
Bold	`text`
Italic	`_text_`
Underline	`#underline[text]`
Inline code	`text`
Heading	`=`
Bulleted list	`-`
Numbered list	`+`
Block quote	`#quote(block: true)[...]`
Inline math	$...$
Equation	$ ... $ on its own line
Figure	`#figure(image("..."), caption: [])`
Table	`#table(columns: 2, ...)`
Link	`#link("...")[text]`
Citation	`@`, with the cursor after it for the key

See Autocomplete, snippets, and formatting for how these inserts behave around a selection.

Comments, references, and grammar

The line comment token is //, and block comments use /* ... */. Toggle comment in the editor context menu writes the line form. The sidebar word count strips // comments and # command tokens before counting a .typ file.

Citations use Typst’s @key syntax. Picking an entry in the Refs tab writes @key at the cursor, and every reference source works the same in a Typst project as in a LaTeX one.

The aggregated bibliography lands in the project’s .typeward folder, at .typeward/citations/library.bib. Typeward never edits your document to load it, so the #bibliography call that points at that file is yours to write. See How references work.

Grammar and spell checking parses .typ files with a Typst-aware parser, so code and markup are skipped and only prose is checked.

Exports

Export PDF and Source bundle (.zip) behave the same as in any project. Word (.docx) and HTML convert Typst input through pandoc, which must be on your PATH. Typst input needs pandoc 3.1.12 or newer, and an older build fails with a message ending “is too old for Typst input; 3.1.12+ required”. See Exporting your work.

What stays the same

Typst projects are ordinary Typeward projects. Version history versions .typ files exactly as it versions .tex files, and autosave and crash recovery cover every text file. The projects library, templates, git, and cloud sync do not care which format a project uses. Where a page in these docs does not name a format, it applies to both.