Start Here
Start Here
Install the CLI, scaffold a workspace, and open your first document in the browser.
You need Node.js 20 or newer, and nothing else.
Authoring, preview and DOCX packing all run on your machine. There’s no account to create and no service to reach before you see a document.
Install the CLI
npx docxcelerate init my-documents
cd my-documents
npm run devThat’s the whole first run. If you’d rather have the command on your path:
npm install -g docxcelerate
dxcl init my-documentsOr add it to a repository you already have, so npx dxcl resolves locally:
npm install --save-dev docxcelerate
npx dxcl init my-documentsNote the first command is npx docxcelerate, not npx dxcl. npx resolves the
package name; the binary inside it is what’s called dxcl.
Scaffold a workspace
dxcl init my-documentsdxcl init writes a self-contained Vite workspace and runs npm install in it.
Called with no arguments it asks for the name, the template and the API endpoint
instead of taking them as flags:
dxcl init| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
--dir <parent-dir> | Creates the workspace inside an existing directory |
--sample | Includes a working document to read (the default) |
--blank | Leaves documents/ empty |
--api-endpoint <url> | Points the workspace at a generation engine |
--no-api-endpoint | Sets up without one; you can add it later |
The endpoint is only needed for documents with AI-written text, and it can be filled in at any time — see the engine.
What you get
my-documents/
docxcelerate.config.json
index.html
package.json
tsconfig.json
vite.config.ts
.gitignore
preview/
main.ts
styles.css
documents/
welcome/Everything above documents/ is the preview app. documents/ is your work: one
directory per document, and with --sample it starts with welcome/ already in
it.
docxcelerate.config.json holds named presets for build and upload behaviour.
Everything else is an ordinary Vite project — open it in your editor and it will
behave like one.
Open the preview
npm run devThe preview site comes up on 127.0.0.1:4507. Pick a document and it is
resolved against its preview data, packed into a real .docx in the browser,
and read back with docx-preview — so what you are looking at is the file
itself, not an approximation of it.
Edit any file under documents/ and the page reloads with the change in place.
Three more scripts come with the workspace:
| Script | What it runs |
|---|---|
npm run document:new | dxcl document new — a new document |
npm run document:node | dxcl document node — a new node in one |
npm run documents:check | tsc over every document |
Where to go next
- Writing nodes — the pieces a document is made of
- Document projects — the files in a document, and what configures them
- The node model — every node type, with previews of each