Developer guide
This section is for people who want to hack on puml itself, ship a new diagram family, build a tool on top of the engine, or understand exactly what the compiler does.
Start here
- Architecture — the five-stage pipeline and the crates around it.
- Compile pipeline — how a
.pumlsource becomes an SVG. - In-browser renderer — how the studio editor renders puml diagrams via the puml-wasm crate.
- Contributing — build, test, lint, release gates.
Reference specs
The repo’s docs/specs/ directory holds the source-of-truth specifications. They’re mirrored under /developer/specs/ for browsing here:
- PicoUML language baseline
- Diagram families architecture
- Studio SPA specification
- Syntax highlighting spec
- LSP spec
- VS Code extension spec
- Markdown fence renderer spec
- Agent / MCP plugin spec
In this section
- Architecture — Modules, crates, and the boundaries the engine enforces.
- Compile pipeline — Source text to deterministic SVG, stage by stage.
- In-browser renderer — How the studio editor renders puml diagrams entirely in your browser.
- Contributing — Build, test, lint, and the contracts the gates enforce.