How-tos

Task recipes.

Short practical recipes for common alpha tasks. Each recipe points to the canonical page for context and avoids detailed UI promises that may change before release.

StatusAlpha recipe index
AudienceEarly users, testers, contributors, agents
SourceWebsite docs and Runebender Xilem README
StabilityRecipe goals are stable; exact UI behavior may move

Run with a file

Use this when you want to open a specific UFO directly from the command line.

cargo run -- assets/untitled.ufo

See Xilem install for native-editor prerequisites and first-run notes.

Run with logs

Use verbose logging when testing alpha behavior or preparing a useful issue report.

cargo run -- --verbose

Include the source checkout, command, UFO path, and expected behavior when reporting a bug.

Trace locally

  1. Import a background image.
  2. Align and scale it against the glyph metrics.
  3. Use local img2bez tracing.
  4. Clean up the resulting outlines manually.

See Tracing for the current tracing map.

Trace with QuiverAI

  1. Confirm that cloud tracing is acceptable for the source image.
  2. Configure an API key through the supported config path or environment variable.
  3. Run the QuiverAI trace command from the app.
  4. Review and clean up the generated outlines.

QuiverAI requires network access, an API key, and API credits. Prefer local tracing when reproducibility or privacy matters.

Convert hyperbeziers

Use conversion when a downstream tool needs standard cubic outlines rather than Runebender hyperbezier contours.

Format command
ConvertCmd/Ctrl + Shift + H
Read firstFormat notes
Exact specHyperbezier UFO extension

Find implementation code

  1. Start with Source map.
  2. Use the README and source tree as the source of truth.
  3. Keep website edits broad unless implementation behavior is settled.
  4. Update agent-readable files when a page is added or moved.