README

Spintax Studio

A native Windows editor for spintax templates, in the shape of a translator: two panes, your template on the left, a live render on the right. The engine that decides what comes out — and whether the template is even valid — is spintax-win, embedded in-process: the Pascal member of a family whose JavaScript, PHP and Python engines are independent implementations held to one shared corpus. The same language and the same verdicts, not the same code — and cross-engine RNG parity is an explicit non-goal, so a seed reproduces your own work rather than another engine's draw. The first release is an offline editor: write a template, see its render, inspect diagnostics and variables, generate variants, and export them.

Studio is developed by 301.st; the SPINTAX language reference and engine family live at spintax.net.

R0 is the offline Windows release, published in the Microsoft Store on 2026-08-04. The source of truth is docs/spec.md and release work is tracked in docs/TODO.md. The application includes bracket-aware editing, live page/source preview, validation diagnostics, variables and include inspection, variant generation and export, a group editor, and built-in help. Generative AI is not part of R0.

Install

Get Spintax Studio from the Microsoft Store — free, Windows 10 1809 or later on x64, about 3.0 MB. The Store hosts, signs and updates the package; nothing else has to be installed to run it. winget install 9MW3CH7B530P installs the same package.

Or take the portable build: spintax-studio-<version>-win64-portable.zip on the latest release, mirrored on SourceForge. Unzip it and run spintax-studio.exe — nothing to install, no runtime, no account. It is not code-signed, so SmartScreen may warn; the Store package is signed and updates itself, which is why it is listed first.

The rest of this file is for building from source.

Building

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/investblog/spintax-studio.git
cd spintax-studio
sh ./build.sh          # Free Pascal 3.2.2+; builds the Windows GUI when Lazarus is present
./tests/studio_tests

build.sh builds the console suite with fpc and the application with lazbuild. If Lazarus is not installed, the console suite still verifies the editor-core. The engine and editor-core compile on Ubuntu; the R0 GUI is currently supported, tested and distributed only on Windows x64. The engine is a git submodule pinned to a released tag (ADR 0001); a plain clone needs git submodule update --init before the build finds unit Spintax.

Platform scope:

• Windows x64: complete Studio GUI and the published Microsoft Store package.
• Ubuntu: engine, editor-core and console tests; no supported GUI build in R0.

Principles

• DeepL metaphor. Minimal chrome, two large panes, instant feedback. Type or paste a template on the left; see exactly what it produces on the right.
• Offline and local-first. R0 makes no network request, collects no telemetry, and needs no account or model key. The About link may open the user's browser when explicitly clicked.
• One .exe, no runtime. A native build — no bundled Node, PHP or Python.
• Engine as the source of truth. Preview and the valid / invalid verdict come from the real engine, not from a second parser or an optimistic editor-side guess.

Relationship to the engine

The engine stays pure and zero-dependency — no network and no GUI are added to it. Studio is a separate product that consumes it; the window, panels and export live in the layers above. That boundary is deliberate and is not crossed.

Family

• investblog/spintax-win — the engine (Object Pascal, MIT)
• investblog/spintax-js — @spintax/core, the reference engine and the home of the golden corpus
• investblog/spintax-php · investblog/spintax-py — the PHP and Python engines

Syntax reference: https://spintax.net

License

Spintax Studio is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later, Copyright (c) 2026 301.st, with an additional permission under GPL v3 section 7 for the MPL-1.1 components it links — SynEdit and TurboPower IPro. The grant, and why IPro needs it while SynEdit does not, are at the top of NOTICE.md, which is also the file the application's About box is generated from. The reasoning, and what it costs in the Store, are in ADR 0010.

The engine in engine/ and the other family engines remain MIT-licensed under their own repositories and notices; the engine is a submodule, not a copy, and nothing here relicenses it.