Installation

ZiraDocs provides native, standalone binaries for macOS, Linux, and Windows. You can install the toolchain (slidelang and doclang) using your preferred method.

Which version these docs describe. The latest released CLIs are v2.32.4 — that is what Homebrew, the Releases page and @latest all give you, and it is what these pages describe unless a page says otherwise. A handful of pages document syntax that is still aspirational and say so in their own accuracy notes; take those notes as authoritative over this one.

These arrived after v2.26.0, the previous release, and the pages that document them say so:

• <<quiz>> and <<poll>> — Dynamic & Interactive
• the [x]{.sub}, [x]{.sup} and [x]{.kbd} tokens, and token interpretation in PPTX — Inline Formatting
• the per-layout CSS and the columns: / align: options — Layouts
• ###–###### as subsection headings in flex — Flex Mode
• watermark: in frontmatter — DocLang Frontmatter

If you are still on v2.26.0, what it does with syntax it doesn’t know is worth spelling out, because it is not a clean rejection. In flex, the opening tag is discarded with a warning and the block’s YAML body spills onto the slide as prose:

warning[FLEX001]: Unrecognized line, content was discarded: "<<quiz>>". (4:1)

The build still exits 0, and the run summary reports warnings: 0 even though that line was printed (toolchain#285). In strict it is louder — each key of the body becomes Unknown content block property and the build fails.

Using Homebrew (macOS & Linux)

The easiest way to install the tools on macOS and Linux is via the official Homebrew tap:

brew tap ziradocs/tap https://github.com/ziradocs/homebrew-tap

# Note: On recent Homebrew versions, you may need to explicitly trust the tap first:
brew trust ziradocs/tap

brew install slidelang doclang

This will install the latest version of both the slidelang and doclang CLIs to your system path.

Downloading Pre-compiled Binaries

Every ZiraDocs release publishes pre-compiled binaries for Intel and ARM architectures.

1. Go to the ZiraDocs Toolchain Releases page on GitHub.
2. Find the latest release (e.g., v2.0.0).
3. Download the archive for your operating system and architecture (e.g., slidelang_2.0.0_darwin_arm64.tar.gz for Apple Silicon Mac).
4. Extract the archive and place the slidelang / doclang binary in a directory included in your system’s PATH.

Compiling from Source (Using Go)

If you have Go installed on your system, you can build and install the CLIs directly from the source code:

# Install SlideLang
go install go.ziradocs.com/slidelang/v2/cmd/slidelang@latest

# Install DocLang
go install go.ziradocs.com/doclang/v2/cmd/doclang@latest

The /v2 is part of the module path and is not optional: both CLIs are /v2 Go modules, so go install go.ziradocs.com/slidelang/cmd/slidelang@latest — without it — fails with module go.ziradocs.com@latest found (v2.0.6+incompatible), but does not contain package ….

Two separate version floors apply:

• Go 1.25 or newer must already be installed. Resolving go.ziradocs.com uses the 4-field go-import form, and that first handshake cannot upgrade the toolchain for you.
• The modules require Go 1.26.5 to build. With the default GOTOOLCHAIN=auto, go downloads a matching toolchain by itself and you will see switching to go1.26.8 — nothing to do. Behind a proxy that blocks that download, or with GOTOOLCHAIN=local, install Go 1.26.5+ first, or the command stops at requires go >= 1.26.5.

This method is recommended if you are developing themes, contributing to the core compiler, or if you prefer to build the binaries locally.

Installing AST TypeScript Types

If you are building custom tooling or agents that interact with ZiraDocs’ open JSON AST, you can install the TypeScript definitions via NPM:

npm install @ziradocs/ast-types