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Galley is what a great LaTeX editor should feel like: local, instant, private, and
beautiful. A power-user code editor and a Word-like visual editor are two views of the
same .tex source. Live preview. A provider-agnostic AI collaborator you fully control.
And a one-click path to bring your existing projects in. It produces every kind of
LaTeX document — papers, theses, books, CVs, slides, posters, letters, and more.
The interface borrows from a fine mechanical typewriter: a two-tone black-and-red ribbon, a monospace impression struck into warm paper, restrained and tactile.
Status — release candidate. This is
v0.9.5: a bug-sweep line on the release candidate milestone, with generated screenshots and a demo recording that show the live proof beside the editor, complete documentation, and a recorded performance & security sign-off. The full product is in place — the warm, incremental CodeMirror 6 + Tectonic + PDF.js core; structured diagnostics and TexLab language intelligence; the dual code/visual editor; math, tables, assets, and bibliography; the provider-agnostic AI assistant and agents; git-backed version history; Overleaf/arXiv import and clean export; a template gallery; security hardening; performance budgets; four accessible themes with i18n and onboarding; opt-in crash reporting; and native installers for Windows, macOS, and Linux. A full QA pass and v1.0.0 follow.
One command — it downloads the right native build, verifies its checksum, installs a galley
launcher, and adds the menu icon:
# Linux / macOS
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/achref-soua/galley/main/scripts/install/install.sh | sh# Windows
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/achref-soua/galley/main/scripts/install/install.ps1 | iexWindows note. Galley's installer isn't code-signed yet, so Windows Defender or SmartScreen may flag the unsigned installer — a known false positive. The one-liner installs the MSI (less prone to this) and verifies it by SHA-256. If Windows still blocks it, allow the item under Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Protection history, then re-run; the script also prints these steps. Code signing is on the roadmap.
Then galley launches it, galley update upgrades to the latest, galley version prints the
installed version, and galley uninstall removes it (your projects are untouched). Galley also
checks for updates on launch and offers them in-app (toggle in Settings → About). Full details in
docs/install.md.
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Screenshots are generated from the live UI with
just screenshots, and the demo withjust demo, so they never go stale. The proof beside the editor is a real PDF.js rendering of the sample document; the packaged app compiles every document for real with the embedded Tectonic engine.
The editor is CodeMirror 6 over the canonical .tex source — there is no parallel model.
Galley compiles that buffer directly with an embedded Tectonic engine and renders the PDF in
the preview pane; a failed build shows its log instead. Compilation is incremental and
warm: one long-lived engine reuses Tectonic's cached format and bundle, and an in-memory
content cache returns the previous proof unchanged when nothing changed — so a cached
single-edit recompile is sub-second. It runs as you type (debounced, and stale builds are
dropped), or on demand with Compile / Ctrl/⌘+B; the preview keeps the last good
proof on screen rather than flickering, shows the build time, and can ring a bell on success
(off by default — Settings → Compilation). Saving stays a separate, explicit action. Tectonic
fetches its package bundle once and caches it, so after a single just prewarm (or first
online compile) every later compile works fully offline.
When a build fails you get help, not a transcript. Galley parses the TeX log into structured
diagnostics — errors, warnings, and bad boxes — and surfaces them three ways: a coloured
dot in the editor gutter beside each affected line, a problems panel under the editor
that lists them worst-first, and a click that jumps the cursor to the offending line. Each
entry pairs the raw message with a plain-language explanation and fix tip in Galley's
voice — "A brace was opened and never closed…" rather than "Paragraph ended before…". It
knows the common offenders: undefined commands, Missing $, unclosed braces and environments,
missing files, package errors, undefined references and citations, and overfull/underfull
boxes. The raw log is still there in the preview when you want it.
Galley speaks LaTeX through the TexLab language server, kept warm in process. As you type you
get context-aware completion — commands, environments, packages, document classes, \ref
labels, \cite keys, and file paths — each with the right icon and insertion. Hover a symbol
for help, press F12 to jump to a definition (a \ref to its \label, a \cite to its
entry — across files in a multi-file project). The server's diagnostics (ChkTeX style
notes and TexLab's own analysis) are merged into the same gutter and problems panel as the
compile-log ones. All of the protocol and mapping is pure, covered Rust; the live texlab process
sits behind a feature seam (like the compile engine), and the editor degrades gracefully when it
is absent. (texlab is a host requirement for the packaged app — install it with
cargo install --locked texlab.)
The structure sidebar shows the open document's include tree — every \input{}, \include{},
and \subfile{} reference parsed live from the editor buffer — and the structural outline from
TexLab (sections and environments). A jump-to-anything search input at the top filters both
sections simultaneously; clicking an include opens the file, clicking a symbol scrolls to it.
Multi-file projects compile correctly out of the box: when the active file is included by a root
document, Galley sends the root to Tectonic, so the proof always reflects the whole document.
The root is detected from the project manifest (project.toml) and can be set in the project
settings.
A project is just a folder. New project scaffolds one with a starter main.tex;
Open a folder imports any existing LaTeX directory in place — Galley scans it, detects
the root document, and adds a single .galley/project.toml manifest that never affects
compilation and can be deleted at any time. Files open and save with a dirty marker, and a
guard catches unsaved edits before you switch away. Everything stays inside the project
root: a sandboxed file store refuses absolute paths, .. traversal, and escaping symlinks.
Galley ships four first-class themes built from a single token system: Onionskin, the
freshly-typed light sheet, and Carbon, the dark carbon-copy, each with a High-Contrast
variant for low-vision use. The switcher follows your OS on first run, remembers your choice,
and repaints the whole app — chrome, editor syntax colours, and PDF-viewer chrome — instantly.
Every text/background pairing is checked against WCAG on every build (base text clears AAA; the
high-contrast variants exceed AA throughout). Core flows are keyboard-navigable and
screen-reader-labelled, reduced-motion is honoured, UI strings are externalised for localization
(see docs/i18n.md), and a first-run tour points the way in. More in
docs/accessibility.md.
Galley is built to stay quick on a modest laptop, with budgets declared in code
(galley-core::perf, mirrored in perf-budget.ts): cold start ≤ 2.5 s, idle RAM ≤ ~150 MB,
sub-second cached recompiles, a 16 ms frame budget, and a ≤ 1536 KiB gzipped UI bundle. The
auto-compile debounce scales with document size so a 100-page document coalesces a burst of
keystrokes into one build; MathLive and PDF.js are code-split and loaded on demand; and a
bundle-size gate runs on every just ci (the bundle currently sits at ~600 KiB). See
docs/performance.md.
- Instant & local-first. A warm, embedded compile engine and an in-memory build cache, built for sub-second incremental recompiles — fully offline, nothing leaves your machine.
- Two doors, one room. A CodeMirror code editor and a rich-text visual editor over the same source. Switch freely, lose nothing.
- Every document, one tool. If LaTeX can make it, Galley edits, previews, and exports it.
- Move in, don't rebuild. Existing projects (Overleaf, arXiv, any folder) import cleanly and round-trip back out — no lock-in, either direction.
- AI you control. Bring your own key for any provider, cloud or local. No vendor lock-in, nothing branded or default-enabled, every change reversible.
- Git-backed version history. Every save auto-checkpoints. A sidebar panel shows the
timeline, a compact diff, and a one-click Revert — stored in
refs/galley/checkpointsinside the project's own repo so history travels with the document.
Galley is a Tauri 2 desktop app: a Rust core does the heavy lifting behind a hexagonal ports-and-adapters boundary, with a Svelte 5 + TypeScript UI in the native WebView — no bundled browser, no Node runtime in the shipped app.
galley/
├─ apps/desktop/ # Tauri 2 + Svelte 5 app (UI in src/, shell in src-tauri/)
├─ crates/
│ ├─ galley-core/ # pure, I/O-free domain: Project, Document, Manifest, compile, diagnostics, intel
│ ├─ galley-compile/ # embedded Tectonic behind the Compiler port
│ ├─ galley-intel/ # TexLab (LSP) client behind the LanguageIntelligence port
│ ├─ galley-vcs/ # git-backed version history: CheckpointHistory trait, InMemoryHistory, Git2History
│ ├─ galley-import/ # create/open projects; folder importer
│ ├─ galley-ai/ # provider-agnostic AI + MCP host (placeholder)
│ └─ galley-security/ # sandboxed file store + keychain (sandbox policy)
├─ packages/ui-kit/ # design tokens, themes, shared components
├─ assets/brand/ # the double-strike "G" icon master
├─ docs/adr/ # architecture decision records
└─ scripts/ci/ # the quality-gate steps
Prerequisites: Rust ≥ 1.96, Node.js ≥ 20.9, pnpm, just. On Linux you also need the Tauri system libraries:
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y \
libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget file libxdo-dev \
libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev pkg-configgit clone https://github.com/achref-soua/galley.git
cd galley
pnpm install # install web dependencies
cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2" --locked # one-time
pnpm dev # run the dev server, or:
just package # build the native installer for your OSThe quality gate is manual for now (GitHub Actions is present but dormant). Run it before every change:
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
just ci |
The full gate: format → lint → coverage → audit → docs → build |
just fmt |
Auto-format Rust and web sources |
just test |
Run all tests |
just cover |
Coverage gate — fails below 100% (line/branch) |
just lint |
clippy (deny warnings) + eslint |
just build |
Build all crates and the frontend bundle |
just icons |
Regenerate the app icon set from the brand master |
just prewarm |
Warm the Tectonic package cache so compiles work offline |
just e2e |
Playwright end-to-end smoke tests (needs a browser) |
just package |
Build every native installer for the current OS |
just checksums |
Write SHA256SUMS.txt for the built installers |
just screenshots |
Regenerate the README screenshots into docs/assets/ |
just demo |
Record the demo walkthrough (.webm; .mp4/.gif need ffmpeg) |
just install-shot |
Render the installer terminal screenshot from the real script |
Galley installs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux — each just package builds that OS's
full installer set (Linux .AppImage/.deb/.rpm, Windows .msi/NSIS .exe, macOS
.dmg), the app pins to the taskbar/Dock/panel with the G icon, and opt-in associations
let it open .tex files. See docs/packaging.md and
docs/download.md.
The embedded Tectonic engine is built only by just package (and the manual
just prewarm / just compile-itest), behind the real-compiler feature, so the core
test and coverage runs never need the native TeX libraries. See
ADR-0006.
- User guide — every feature, end to end.
- Migration & import — bring Overleaf/arXiv/folder projects in (and back out).
- Download & install · Packaging — installers per OS.
- Performance · Accessibility · Localization · Privacy
- Release readiness — the RC sign-off and the path to v1.0.0.
- Architecture decisions — the choices behind the stack and the testing model.
- Contributing · Security · Changelog
MIT © Achref Soua