Getting started

Pre-alpha

yaz is not yet usable for real work. There are no released binaries; the only way to run it today is to build from source.

Build and run

Requires Rust 1.85+, Node 22+ and pnpm 9+.

git clone https://github.com/GeneralPawz/yaz.git
cd yaz
pnpm install
pnpm dev

pnpm app:build produces a release binary and an installer.

Do not use cargo build --release

It produces a binary whose window shows the webview's "cannot reach this page" error, and nothing in that message suggests a build problem.

tauri-build distinguishes development from production using environment the Tauri CLI sets. Run bare, it defaults to development: the dev server URL is compiled in and the frontend is never embedded, so the binary looks for a Vite server that is not running. The build script warns about it, but cargo warnings are easy to miss.

Plain cargo is fine for the other crates — it is only yaz-app that needs the CLI.

Both commands run from the repository root, not from apps/desktop. The Tauri configuration lives at crates/yaz-app/tauri.conf.json, and the CLI finds it by searching downward from the working directory.

Platform prerequisites — including the two ARM64 Windows toolchain traps whose error messages never mention ARM64 — are in development setup.

Your first document

1. Click the blue y in the corner and choose Open folder. Pick a directory containing a .tex file.
2. Pick a file from the list. main.tex is preferred as the entry document, or the first .tex found.
3. Edit. Mod+S saves; the Vim toggle switches keybindings without losing your undo history or cursor. Select some text and a formatting bar appears under it.
4. Compile, from the Work tab of the ribbon. The PDF appears beside your source, and clicking in it takes you to the line that produced it.

A compile can produce both errors and a usable PDF — that is normal LaTeX behaviour, so success is reported from whether a document actually appeared, not from the compiler's exit status.

Writing in yaz covers the rest: the preview, the three ways of setting the text, the tabs, the command palette, and how citations and tasks reach the document.

What is there

Source and preview modes over one buffer; plain, continuous and page views; the outline, citations, glossary, tasks, details, history and PDF tabs; the command palette; version control; themes; German and English; and the six bundled plugins — Zotero, Obsidian, Todoist, text formats, LaTeX packages and Learn.

What is not there yet

A new-project wizard, loading a plugin from a directory while developing it, and the Better BibTeX citation-key tier. Released binaries do not exist; building from source is the only way to run it.