folio

The document Word should have been.

Write reports where the numbers live in the document and calculate as you type, the page looks finished from the first word, and the file is plain text that anyone can read — today, and in twenty years.

Try it in your browser · Install on Linux, Windows or macOS · See the examples

Why folio

Your data lives in the document. A table in folio is a real dataset: typed columns, units, and formulas that recalculate as you edit. Charts are drawn from those tables, so when a number changes, every total and every chart that depends on it changes with it. No pasting screenshots of spreadsheets, no figures that quietly go out of date.

Beautiful without trying. You write headings, paragraphs, tables and charts; a theme decides the fonts, colours, table rules and chart palette. There are ten themes, each with a dark mode, and switching theme restyles the whole document at once. Print or export to PDF and it looks like a report, not a web page.

A file you own. A folio document is one plain Markdown file. Open it in any text editor, read it on GitHub, keep it in Git, diff it, search it. No binary format, no account, no lock-in — and folio itself is open source under the MIT licence. Documents render fully offline.

What you can do

• Tables two ways — a plain Markdown table that GitHub shows as is, or a dataset with typed columns, units and formulas across rows and tables. One click turns one into the other.
• Charts as queries — bar, line, area, scatter, pie and donut, with several series, stacked or grouped; filter and sort them with the same expressions as formulas. Or write a full Vega-Lite chart over your data.
• Equations, code and diagrams — LaTeX maths, highlighted code, Mermaid and Graphviz diagrams, hand-written SVG drawings, and parametric 3D models (JSCAD) you can export as STL.
• Images, audio and sheet music — embedded in the document itself; record straight from the microphone; write music in ABC notation and hear it played.
• Export to PDF, print, light and dark mode, a section browser, and a command palette (Ctrl+K) that finds every action by the words you already use.

It is just Markdown

This is a live dataset and a chart in a folio document — readable, and diffable, by anyone:

::: table {#budget}
caption: "Launch budget"
columns:
  - {name: item, type: text}
  - {name: cost, type: number, unit: "£k"}
  - {name: share, type: formula, expr: "cost / (self.col.cost | sum())", format: percent}
data:
  - [Engineering, 30]
  - [Design, 12]
  - [Marketing, 9]
:::

::: chart {#budget-chart}
source: @budget
query: {select: [item, cost]}
type: donut
:::

Everything else — headings, lists, links, ordinary tables — is the Markdown you already know.

How it compares

	folio	Word / Google Docs	Notion	Obsidian	Jupyter / Quarto
Tables that calculate, in the document	✓	basic	partly	plugins	✓ (code)
Charts drawn from the document's own data	✓	embedded sheets	partly	plugins	✓ (code)
Polished output with no styling by hand	✓ (themes)	manual	fixed look	themes	templates
Plain-text file you can read anywhere	✓	—	—	✓	✓
Works offline, no account	✓	partly	—	✓	✓
No code to run	✓	✓	✓	✓	—

Examples

Open any of these in the web version (Ctrl+K, then "example"):

• Q3 Sales Review — regions, product mix and targets as live charts, a heatmap, and the sales pipeline as a diagram.
• Bracket design review — a variants table driving a 3D model, mass against stiffness, a dimensioned drawing and a requirements trace.
• A practice journal — a practice log charted week by week, and sheet music you can play.
• Management accounts, Signals and spectra, A technical paper, and more.

Install

Try it first in your browser: https://tinpotnick.github.io/folio/ — open and save files on your own computer; nothing is uploaded.

Linux

Flatpak — any distribution, sandboxed, updates with your system: Install folio (opens in GNOME Software or KDE Discover), or in a terminal:

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists folio https://tinpotnick.github.io/folio/repo/folio.flatpakrepo
flatpak install --user folio io.github.tinpotnick.folio

Fedora (and other dnf-based systems) — dnf upgrade keeps it current:

sudo dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile=https://tinpotnick.github.io/folio/repo/folio.repo
sudo dnf install folio

Debian and Ubuntu — apt upgrade keeps it current:

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://tinpotnick.github.io/folio/repo/folio-archive-keyring.gpg \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/folio-archive-keyring.gpg > /dev/null
curl -fsSL https://tinpotnick.github.io/folio/repo/folio.list \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/folio.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update && sudo apt install folio

Or download the .AppImage, .rpm or .deb from the latest release.

The repositories and packages are signed with folio's key, fingerprint 6F82 66DF 93E2 5A83 AD43 E40B 089C 758D 9CB4 E587 (folio-archive-key.asc).

Windows and macOS

Download from the latest release: the .msi or -setup.exe for Windows, the .dmg for macOS (Apple silicon and Intel). The builds are not code-signed yet: on macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time; on Windows, choose More info → Run anyway if SmartScreen warns.

folio is young (version 0.1): expect rough edges, and please report them. Your documents are plain Markdown, so they stay readable whatever happens to folio.

Build from source

npm install
npm run dev            # the web app at http://localhost:5173
npm run dev:desktop    # the desktop app (needs Rust and Tauri's system packages)

Tests, the desktop toolchain, and how the project is organised are in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Support folio

folio is free, and made in spare time. If it saves you time or makes your reports better, you can buy me a coffee ☕ — or star the repository and tell someone who writes reports.

Licence

MIT — see LICENSE. Bundled fonts, libraries and samples keep their own licences, listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. The optional Strudel live-coding player is AGPL-3.0 and is not part of folio's builds; folio offers to download it the first time you play a Strudel pattern.