Quire

One file for a job application: a CV, a response to selection criteria and a cover letter, edited in the finished design and printed to PDF.

---

Quire holds the three documents an application needs, lets you edit them in place in the design that prints, counts words against the limits a panel sets, and writes the PDF itself. A portal that will not take a PDF gets a Word file from the same document. It is one HTML file. It has no server, no account and no telemetry, and your documents never leave your machine.

A quire is a gathering of sheets.

Use it

1. Download dist/index.html and open it in Chrome or Chromium. Firefox works, without running headers and footers.
2. The sample workspace opens. Click any text and type. Enter adds a bullet or paragraph. Backspace on an empty one removes it.
3. Use the structure rail on the left to reorder, remove or add sections. Drag a row, or use its buttons. Point at a block on the page to see the same controls in the right margin.
4. Set the colour scheme, type and margins under Design. Set page headers and footers under Header and footer. Set word limits, criterion numbering and the layout choices under Document. The layout choices place the contact block beside or under your name, the letterhead date left or right, and a column's detail line under or beside its item. The design decides the rest.
5. Choose File, then Save file, to keep a .quire.json file with the application it belongs to. Edits also autosave in the browser.
6. Click Export PDF. Quire writes the PDF itself and your browser saves it. No print dialog, and the same file in every browser. The page count in the toolbar comes from the same layout, so it is the count the file will have; the dashed guides on the sheet show about where each page starts. A page break you set is a cut in the PDF and in the Word file.
7. If the portal will not take a PDF, choose File, then Export Word file.

The Word file

Some portals only accept .doc or .docx, and a panel sometimes asks for a document it can comment in. File, then Export Word file, writes one .docx for the document you are on: the same words, the same sections in the same order, the same bold, italic and flags, the same running header and footer, and the design's own families, sizes and accent.

Word repaginates it. That is the trade: a Word file is a document Word lays out, so the line breaks and the page breaks are its own. Export PDF stays the way to send an application.

Flags

Text between [[ and ]] is a flag. It prints amber and the toolbar counts it, so a fact you still have to confirm cannot slip into a submission. To flag words: select them and use the toolbar that appears, right-click them, or press Ctrl+Shift+F.

Ctrl+K opens a command palette with every action, every section type and a jump to any block.

The editor follows your system's colour scheme. In dark mode the desk, the bars and the panels go dark and the sheet stays white, so an evening at the desk is easier on the eyes and the page still reads as paper.

Keyboard

Keys	Action
Enter	New bullet or paragraph after this one
Backspace	On an empty bullet or paragraph, remove it
Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I	Bold, italic
Ctrl+Shift+F	Flag the selected words, or the word at the caret
Ctrl+K	Command palette
Right-click	Actions for the text under the pointer (Shift and right-click keeps the browser's menu)
Alt+Up, Alt+Down	Move this bullet, paragraph or entry
Alt+Shift+Up, Alt+Shift+Down	Move the whole section
Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z	Undo, redo a structural change (outside text)
Ctrl+S, Ctrl+O, Ctrl+P	Save file, open file, export PDF
Esc	Close a panel
?	Show the shortcuts

Headers and footers

Every document ships with a running header and footer, because a multi-page application is read on paper and gets separated. Page two onward carries the document title top right, the applicant's name bottom left and Page 2 of 2 bottom centre. Page one carries its own masthead, so it stays clear. Tick "Show on the first page" under Header and footer to change that.

Each document has three header slots and three footer slots. They accept {page}, {pages}, {name}, {title} and {date}. Chromium 131 and later print them through CSS page margin boxes. Other browsers print the page without them.

The exported PDF carries nothing but your document. Quire lays out the pages and writes the file itself, so nothing stamps a date, a page title or a file:// URL on your sheets, and the running header and footer print in every browser, Firefox included.

Build it

npm install
npm run dev        # Vite dev server
npm run build      # dist/index.html, one self-contained file
npm test           # typecheck, unit tests, build, drift check, browser tests

Node 24 or later. The browser suite reads the printed PDF with pdfinfo, pdftotext and pdftoppm, so it needs poppler-utils (sudo dnf install poppler-utils, or sudo apt install poppler-utils). It reads the exported Word file back with unzip.

npm run fonts subsets the vendored faces in src/fonts/ and writes src/fonts/faces.json, which the build inlines. npm run build and npm test run it first.

Fonts on screen: Inter and Source Serif 4 load from Google Fonts, and the body uses XCharter if the machine has it. The exported PDF always embeds Quire's own subsets of Source Serif 4 and Inter, so the file reads the same everywhere.

dist/index.html is committed. npm run check fails when it differs from a fresh build, so rebuild before you commit a change under src/.

Embed your own workspace

The build embeds src/seed.json as the sample. To ship a copy with your own workspace inside it, so the file opens straight onto your documents:

QUIRE_SEED=/path/to/application.quire.json npm run build
cp dist/index.html "/path/to/application/Application Editor.html"

Edits in that copy autosave under its own path in the browser. Save a file before you move it.

How the export works

Quire clones the sheet into a box one page wide and one page tall with CSS multi-column, so the browser breaks the document under the same rules the print stylesheet declares. Each column is a page. Every position is then read back from that laid-out clone and written into the PDF, which is why the file matches the screen. The clone is typeset in the embedded faces, so what is measured is what is drawn.

src/pdf.ts writes the PDF: pages, text, filled rectangles and the embedded fonts. It has no dependency and knows nothing about the DOM. src/paint.ts reads the DOM and produces the items it draws.

Render a PDF without a browser window

chromium-browser --headless --disable-gpu --no-sandbox \
  --allow-file-access-from-files --no-pdf-header-footer --virtual-time-budget=5000 \
  --print-to-pdf=cv.pdf "file:///path/to/index.html#cv"

#cv selects the document by id. With --allow-file-access-from-files, ?open=file.json loads a workspace from a file beside the page.

Files

Path	What it is
src/model.ts	Types, templates, word counts, migration, the @page rule, plain text and Markdown export. No DOM.
src/render.ts	Document to DOM, with editing controls.
src/editor.ts	State, storage, history, panels, structure rail, events.
src/text.ts	Model text to editable DOM and back. Bold, italic and flags are plain markers in the model.
src/pdf.ts	Writes the PDF: pages, text, rectangles, embedded fonts. No DOM, unit tested.
src/docx.ts	Writes the Word file: the stored zip and the WordprocessingML in it. No DOM, unit tested.
src/paint.ts	Reads the laid-out document and produces the items the writer draws.
scripts/fonts.mjs	Subsets the vendored faces and records their widths for the writer.
src/styles/document.css	The printed design. Sizes are relative to --base, spacing to --density.
src/styles/editor.css	Editor chrome. Screen only.
src/seed.json	The fictional sample workspace.
test/unit	Vitest, for the model.
test/e2e	Playwright, against dist/index.html.

File format

A workspace is JSON: format, design, and documents. Each document has an id, a title, a kind (cv, criteria, letter or blank), numbering, optional wordLimit and blockWordLimit, running header and footer slots, and blocks. Block types: masthead, docmast, section (kinds prose, achievements, entries, columns, skills), opening, criterion, closing, letterhead, signoff. Any block may carry pageBreak: true.

Files from the first-generation editor ({ cv: ..., criteria: ... }) open and migrate.

Your data

Documents stay in the browser, under a key that includes the file's own path, and in the .quire.json file you save. Nothing is sent anywhere. The repository holds no personal data: the sample workspace is fictional.

Contributing

main is protected. Every change lands as a pull request that passes the gate and that the owner reviews and merges. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before you open one.

Report a vulnerability privately. Read SECURITY.md; do not open a public issue.

Documents

File	What it records
PRODUCT.md	What Quire is for and what it will not do.
DESIGN.md	The visual system: type, colour, spacing, the mark.
CLAUDE.md	How to work in this repository.

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE. Icons are Phosphor Icons, MIT. The embedded faces are Source Serif 4 and Inter, both under the SIL Open Font Licence 1.1: see src/fonts/.