Start Here

Install the CLI, scaffold a workspace, and open your first document in the browser.

Docxcelerate needs Node.js 20 or newer and nothing else. Authoring, preview and DOCX packing all run locally — there is no account to create and no service to reach before you see a document.

Scaffold a workspace

npx docxcelerate init my-letters
cd my-letters
npm run dev

dxcl init creates a self-contained Vite workspace and installs its dependencies. npm run dev opens the preview site, where you can pick a document, resolve it against preview data, pack it into a real .docx in the browser, and read it back with docx-preview.

Run dxcl init with no arguments for a guided setup that asks for the template and the API endpoint.

Installing it properly

The command is npx docxcelerate, not npx dxcl — npx resolves the package name, and the binary inside it is called dxcl.

To get dxcl on your path so you can use it directly:

npm install -g docxcelerate
dxcl init my-letters

Or add it to an existing project, where npx dxcl then resolves locally:

npm install --save-dev docxcelerate
npx dxcl init my-letters

What you get

my-letters/
  docxcelerate.config.json
  index.html
  package.json
  preview/
    main.ts
    styles.css
  vite.config.ts
  tsconfig.json
  letters/

docxcelerate.config.json holds named presets for build and upload behaviour. Everything else is an ordinary Vite project — you can open it in your editor and it will behave like one.

Create a document

dxcl letter new tenancy-renewal --title "Tenancy Renewal"

That writes a document project under letters/tenancy-renewal/, with the template, preview data, styles and types kept in separate files:

letters/tenancy-renewal/
  letter.project.ts
  letter-style.ts
  letter.tsx
  preview-data.ts
  types.ts
  nodes/
    index.ts

Add a node

dxcl letter node letters/tenancy-renewal next-steps --type paragraph --mode dynamic

The generator writes nodes/next-steps.node.ts and updates nodes/index.ts. Placement is left to you on purpose — add the generated component to letter.tsx at the point in the document where it belongs.

/** @jsxImportSource docxcelerate/template */
import { Document, Section, template } from "docxcelerate/template";
import { Greeting, NextSteps } from "./nodes/index.ts";
import type { LetterData } from "./types.ts";

export const letterTemplate = template<LetterData>(
  <Document id="tenancy-renewal" title="Tenancy Renewal">
    <Section id="opening" title="Opening">
      <Greeting />
    </Section>
    <Section id="closing" title="Closing">
      <NextSteps />
    </Section>
  </Document>,
);

Save, and the preview reloads with the new node in place.

Where to go next

Documents and nodes — the component model
The node model — every node type, with previews of each
Static and dynamic — what runs locally, what needs an endpoint
Package entrypoints — everything importable

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