toonstrip

A framework-embeddable library that renders a comic strip — panels, characters, poses, emotions, speech/thought balloons, backdrops — from caller-supplied data, as a live, responsive, canvas-based widget. Not a flat pre-rendered image: panels are drawn on real <canvas> elements and re-render as their container resizes.

toonstrip does not generate content. You supply panels, dialogue, and emotion as data (by hand, by script, by calling an LLM yourself); toonstrip only renders it. See TOONSTRIP_DEV_PLAN.md §0 for the full list of non-goals.

Site: toonstrip.danielkimdev.com — intro, docs, playground, changelog. Source in site/.

Why not an image?

	Pre-rendered PNG	Exported SVG	toonstrip
Reflows to the container	No — one fixed layout	Scales, doesn't reflow	Column count follows width
Sharp on any display	Only at export size	Yes	Yes — DPR-aware backing store
Screen readers	One alt text, if you wrote it	Depends on the export	Every panel described from its own lines
Change one line of dialogue	Re-render, re-upload	Re-export	Edit the JSON
Page weight (3-panel strip)	One large image	Text-heavy vector	Only the sprites it references

FAQ

Does toonstrip generate the comic for me? No. It renders the document you give it — the dialogue, emotions, and direction are yours, your script's, or an LLM you call yourself.

Can I use it commercially? Yes. The code is MIT, and the default pack's Comic Chat art is redistributed under MIT terms (see NOTICE).

How big is it? About 36 KB gzipped for element + core + schema validator; sprite sheets load per character actually used.

Does it render on the server? The Astro component emits an inert tag on the server and the browser draws. For static PNGs, the CLI runs the same renderer in Node: npx -p @toonstrip/cli toonstrip render strip.json --out strip.png.

Full FAQ: toonstrip.danielkimdev.com/docs/faq/.

Packages

Package	What it is
packages/schema	The ComicStripDocument v1 types, JSON Schema, and a runtime validator
packages/core	The framework-agnostic rendering engine (figures, balloons, backdrops, layout)
packages/element	<comic-strip>, a zero-framework-deps custom element wrapping core
packages/astro	An Astro integration + <ComicStrip> component wrapping element
packages/react	A <ComicStrip> React component wrapping element
packages/vue	A <ComicStrip> Vue component wrapping element
packages/next	Deprecated — react's <ComicStrip> now carries its own 'use client' directive and cli exports the SSR-placeholder helper directly; see docs/next.md
packages/pack-comic-chat	The default asset pack: the original 15-character Comic Chat roster + 3 backdrops (MIT, see its NOTICE)
packages/pack-example	A second, small, wholly original pack proving the pack contract isn't coupled to pack-comic-chat
packages/cli	The toonstrip CLI (pack validate, render to PNG)
packages/asset-packager	The toonstrip-pack CLI: turns per-pose PNGs or grid sheets into a valid pack (validate, slice, register, sheet-pack, derive join anchors). No model, no network
examples/astro-blog	A minimal Astro site embedding a live strip in a blog post
examples/react-vite	A minimal Vite + React app embedding a live strip, prop-updated without a remount
examples/vue-vite	A minimal Vite + Vue app embedding a live strip, prop-updated without a remount
examples/next-app

Dependency direction is one-way: schema → core → element → astro, and element → react → next and element → vue alongside it (next also depends on cli for its SSR placeholder). Asset packs depend on schema only.

Quick start (development)

pnpm install
pnpm build
pnpm test

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full workspace guide, including how to add a new character or asset pack.

Documents

• docs/schema.md — the ComicStripDocument format
• docs/packs.md — the asset pack contract, and a worked walkthrough for adding a character
• docs/asset-image-spec.md — the rules a character/backdrop PNG must follow to be packed by @toonstrip/asset-packager into a pack
• docs/asset-sheets.md — sheet input: one generated image holding a grid of poses or scenes, sliced into many pack assets
• docs/astro.md — embedding a strip in Astro
• docs/react.md — embedding a strip with @toonstrip/react
• docs/vue.md — embedding a strip with @toonstrip/vue
• docs/next.md — embedding a strip in Next.js App Router with @toonstrip/react + @toonstrip/cli, including the SSR placeholder (@toonstrip/next is deprecated — this doc covers the replacement)
• docs/vanilla-html.md — embedding a strip with no build step at all (plain HTML, CDN imports)
• — the full project plan

License

MIT (see LICENSE). The default pack-comic-chat asset pack incorporates Microsoft Comic Chat art under the same license, with its own attribution — see NOTICE and THIRD_PARTY.md at the repo root, and packages/pack-comic-chat/NOTICE.