Folio

Folio is a local-first book layout app for Linux and Windows 11. It sits somewhere between Scribus and a friendly word processor: in Easy mode, someone who has never heard of bleed can make a picture book and send it to Amazon KDP, and Expert mode exposes baseline grids, master pages, PDF/X and colour profiles.

Status: early development. Version 0.1.0 is the first public release: it opens, lays out and exports books, but it is young. From this release a change to the book file format comes with a migration, so books made now keep opening; still, keep a copy of anything that matters.

Download

Each release on GitHub Releases has:

• Windows 11: an installer (…-setup.exe) or .msi, for x64 and ARM64.
• Linux: a .deb, an .rpm, or an .AppImage (make it executable and run it), for x64 and arm64.
• For AI agents: folio-0.1.0.mcpb, a one-click bundle for Claude Desktop, and the @liminal-hq/folio-mcp npm package (see packaging/README.md).
• SHA256SUMS to check the downloads.

Folio only looks for a newer version when you ask it to (Help → Check for updates…) or turn on the check in Preferences → Updates.

What Folio is for

• Books of every kind. Picture books, novels, textbooks, cookbooks and illustrated guides, poetry and memoirs with photos, each starting from a preset with the right trim size, bleed, grid and styles.
• Easy or Expert. Easy talks in plain language ("pink dashed line") and hides what you don't need. Expert shows everything ("bleed 0.125 in"). Switching never removes data.
• From Word to Kindle, Kobo and print. Bring in words from Word, Google Docs, ODT, Markdown or a paste, then export EPUB for Kindle and Kobo, KDP-ready interior and cover PDFs, PDF/X for print shops, and a share PDF — with fix-oriented preflight before every export.
• Covers that do the maths. Spine width from page count and paper, barcode-safe areas, bleed and wrap for paperback, hardcover and dust jacket.
• Yours to keep. A .folio file is an open zip of JSON, Markdown and your original pictures. Nothing leaves your computer unless you export it, and there is no account.
• Recognisable on your desktop. Installed Linux packages and Windows installers give .folio books their own document icon in file explorers.
• Jax, if you want him. An optional 3D otter companion gives gentle tips, a per-page checklist and offline "how do I…?" answers from a local model.

Platforms

Platform	Status
Linux (GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon; Wayland and X11)	Primary target. Wayland first.
Windows 11	A real target, written alongside the Linux code rather than ported later.
macOS	Not planned for v1.

Trying it from source

Folio is not ready for daily use, but you can run the current shell.

You will need Bun, a Rust toolchain (the version is pinned in rust-toolchain.toml), and the Tauri v2 prerequisites for your system. On Linux, that includes WebKitGTK 4.1.

bun install
bun run tauri:dev

tauri:dev starts the desktop shell with the development settings the MCP automation tooling needs. To run the whole local check suite before contributing:

bun run validate

If Rust tooling is not installed locally, run the Rust and Tauri commands in the ghcr.io/liminal-hq/tauri-dev-desktop:latest container.

Documentation

Location	What it covers
spec/	The specification: product, architecture, project format, layout, export, UI, Jax
docs/decisions.md	The decision log (D-numbers) lifted from the specification
design/	The Claude Design prototype files — reference only, not the source of truth
site/	The public documentation site

Contributing

Folio follows the Liminal HQ house conventions: Canadian English, Conventional Commits, human-readable pull request titles, licence headers on source files, and no pushes to main. The full rules are in AGENTS.md (mirrored for Claude Code in CLAUDE.md).

Part of Liminal HQ

Folio sits alongside Waypoint, Spindle, Jar and Cadence, and shares their window chrome, tokens and conventions.

Licence

Licensed under either of the Apache License, Version 2.0 or the MIT licence, at your option.