Zenith

Zenith

A design-document format and engine built for the age of AI agents.

Plain-text .zen design files that you can read, diff, review, validate, and let an agent safely edit — compiled deterministically to pixel-exact PNG, self-contained SVG, and print-ready PDF.

Install Quick start Features Validation Commands Agents

Every banner and diagram in this README is itself created using Zenith — source in assets/showcase/ .

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Zenith is a plain-text format and engine for design files — posters, decks, books, social graphics, diagrams, and more. The idea is simple: design should work the way code does. You should be able to read it, diff it, review it, test it, and let an agent safely edit it.

A .zen file is human-readable KDL text. The engine parses it, validates it against a large diagnostic set, compiles it to a backend-neutral scene, and renders the same file to the same pixels every time — as a PNG, self-contained SVG, or print-ready PDF.

The sections below are collapsed to keep this page skimmable — click any heading's ▸ to expand it. Install and Quick start are open by default.

Install

The recommended way to install the zenith CLI is the install script, which detects your platform and downloads the matching prebuilt binary from GitHub Releases.

Linux / macOS

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zenitheditor/zenith/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zenitheditor/zenith/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

Set ZENITH_INSTALL_DIR to change the install location (default ~/.local/bin):

ZENITH_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin \

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zenitheditor/zenith/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

With cargo

cargo install zenith-tool    # from crates.io (installs the `zenith` binary)

cargo install --git https://github.com/zenitheditor/zenith zenith-tool # from source

Thirteen library crates are published under their own names for Rust projects that build on the engine directly: zenith-geometry, zenith-session, zenith-core, zenith-layout, zenith-raster, zenith-scene, zenith-perception, zenith-zpx, zenith-render, zenith-tx, zenith-producers, zenith-pipeline, and zenith-editor. zenith-editor-wasm and zenith-editor-bench are not published.

With npm

npm install -g @zenitheditor/zenith-mcp

npx -y @zenitheditor/zenith-mcp --help

The npm package installs the matching prebuilt zenith binary from GitHub Releases and is focused on the MCP Registry launch path. The unscoped zenith binary remains the Rust CLI.

GitHub Releases

Download directly from GitHub Releases:

Update

zenith update                   # latest stable release

zenith update --pre # latest prerelease zenith update --version # a specific release tag, e.g. the ones on the Releases page

Verify with zenith --version.

Build from source

For local development or source installs:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/zenitheditor/zenith

cd zenith cargo build --release cargo install --path zenith-cli # installs zenith to ~/.cargo/bin ./scripts/install.sh --local # installs the local build to ~/.local/bin

The release binary lands at target/release/zenith. No C toolchain or system libraries are required — the dependency graph is C-free and unsafe is forbidden workspace-wide.

Quick start

zenith validate examples/hello.zen          # report diagnostics (add --json for machine output)

zenith fmt examples/hello.zen # canonical, idempotent formatting zenith fix draft.zen --apply # apply machine fixes (tokens, typos) in one step zenith tokens examples/hello.zen # list design tokens and their resolved values zenith inspect examples/hello.zen # print the node tree (read-only) zenith render examples/hello.zen --png hello.png # render to PNG

zenith render examples/multipage.zen --all-pages out/ # one PNG per page zenith render examples/hello.zen --pdf hello.pdf # print-ready PDF zenith render examples/hello.zen --svg hello.svg # self-contained SVG zenith render examples/multipage.zen --svg page.svg --page 2 zenith render examples/multipage.zen --all-pages-svg svg-pages/ zenith render examples/hello.zen --scene scene.json # dump the scene IR

• SVG assets: RGB colors and embedded image assets keep the artifact self-contained.
• SVG text: Outlines preserve appearance and lose editing, selection, and search.
• SVG fallback: Effects capture their complete scope. Non-normal blends capture the page. Crossed scopes and bitmap glyphs require capture.
• PDF fallback: Unsupported features capture their required scope or page. Captured text loses selection and search. Captured links lose click targets.
• Resolution: --raster-scale changes fallback pixels without changing vector geometry or page dimensions. Existing bitmap assets retain source resolution.
• Reports: render.svg_rasterized and render.pdf_rasterized report pages, command ranges, and reasons. JSON includes structured rasterized regions.
• PDF errors: CLI and MCP reject capture and resource errors. Legacy library APIs returning Vec retain compatibility emission. Use report APIs for strict errors.
• Policy: Blocking diagnostics prevent output writes. Read the export report after source validation.
• Writes: Each file uses a temporary sibling and rename. Write errors preserve existing destinations. Earlier committed outputs can remain after later I/O errors.
• Batch reports: Partial rows and variants retain committed paths with failed status. Manifest write errors retain batch error counts.
• Filesystem limits: Writes reject read-only destinations. Symlink outputs replace the resolved target and retain the link. Replacement preserves permissions and leaves other hard links unchanged. Crash durability is not guaranteed.

zenith render examples/multipage.zen --pdf book.pdf --raster-scale 2 --json

zenith render examples/hello.zen --svg hello.svg --raster-scale 2 --json

The smallest valid document:

zenith version=1 {

project id="proj.hello" name="Hello Zenith" tokens format="zenith-token-v1" { token id="color.bg" type="color" value="#f8fafc" token id="color.ink" type="color" value="#111827" token id="font.body" type="fontFamily" value="Noto Sans" token id="size.heading" type="dimension" value=(px)42 } styles {} document id="doc.hello" title="Hello Zenith" { page id="page.hello" w=(px)480 h=(px)160 { rect id="rect.bg" x=(px)0 y=(px)0 w=(px)480 h=(px)160 fill=(token)"color.bg" text id="text.hello" x=(px)24 y=(px)24 w=(px)432 h=(px)112 fill=(token)"color.ink" font-family=(token)"font.body" font-size=(token)"size.heading" { span "Hello Zenith" } } } }

See examples/ for runnable .zen files covering shapes, rich text, inline markdown (loaded from an external file), code blocks, images, frames/groups, multi-page documents and styles, plus the richer features — gradient, shadow, blur, filter, mask, table, flowchart (shapes + connectors), charts (bar/line/area/pie/donut/sparkline, with legends, value labels, and data binding), and anchors.

Why

Code got source control, types, tests, and PRs. Design files got none of that — and that hurts people and blocks AI.

Code got source control, types, tests, and pull requests. Design files got none of that. They're opaque blobs — you can't diff them, you can't review a change, and the same file can render differently on different machines.

That's a problem for people, and it's a bigger problem for AI. Agents can already write code and open pull requests, because code is text they can read and reason about. Drop them into a design tool and they go blind. Ask an agent to "make the heading brand red and tighten the layout" and there's nothing safe to grab onto — no stable target, no validation, no preview, no way to check the result.

Zenith fixes that. The goal is to make design files as safe to automate as code:

• Plain text you own — readable, diffable, yours forever.
• Stable IDs so every change is a reviewable patch, not a mouse drag.
• Deterministic rendering — the same file always produces the same pixels.
• Real validation — text fits, colors come from the design system, nothing falls off the page.
• Safe edits — every change is a typed transaction, checked and previewable before it lands, with a source diff and an audit record.

It's not AI image generation

The opposite of an image model: Zenith generates the editable design , not a flat picture.

This is the most common mix-up, so it's worth being blunt: Zenith is the opposite of an image model like Nano Banana, ChatGPT image, or Grok Imagine.

An image ge