Quick Start

New project

texforge new my-thesis
cd my-thesis
texforge build

That’s it: my-thesis.pdf is ready in the project root. On the very first build texforge downloads Tectonic (the LaTeX engine) automatically — no TeX distribution needed.

Interactive wizard

If you prefer a guided flow, texforge init auto-detects the context:

If a .tex file with \documentclass is found in the current directory, it migrates the existing project: asks for title and author and generates project.toml.
Otherwise it guides the creation of a new project: asks for name and template.

# Existing LaTeX project
cd my-existing-thesis/
texforge init

# Empty directory
mkdir my-new-doc && cd my-new-doc
texforge init

The everyday loop

texforge check          # lint: missing files, broken refs, unclosed envs
texforge fmt            # normalize formatting
texforge build          # compile to <title>.pdf in the project root
texforge build --watch  # rebuild automatically while you edit

Project layout

A texforge project is a regular LaTeX project plus a project.toml manifest:

my-thesis/
├── project.toml     # document metadata and build entry point
├── main.tex
├── sections/        # chapters, sections (depends on template)
├── bib/             # bibliography (depends on template)
└── my-thesis.pdf    # generated by texforge build

See Configuration for the project.toml format and Templates for the available starting points.