Command line#

scenet [--version] <command> [options]

Two commands: build compiles a document, schema emits the JSON Schema. A bare scenet prints help to stderr and exits 2 — it did nothing, and a script chaining off its status should not read that as success.

`scenet build`#

scenet build SOURCE [-o OUTPUT] [--core] [--debug] [--live-text] [--strip] [--quiet]

Compiles SOURCE to SVG. The frontend is chosen by extension:

Extension	Read as
`.panel.yaml`, `.scene.yaml`, `.yaml`, `.yml`	YAML — single panel or a `panels:` sequence
`.script`	Comic script

Options#

-o, --output PATH: Where to write. Defaults to the source’s name with an .svg extension, alongside it. Note that duel.panel.yaml becomes duel.svg, not duel.panel.svg.
--core: Also write the resolved Panel Core as JSON — every coordinate the compiler chose, in a format you can read, diff and hand-edit. See Panel Core.
--debug: Also write a diagnostic overlay showing the geometry the solver was working against: silhouette hulls, face exclusion zones, named anchors, gaze vectors and tail routes. This is usually the fastest way to see why a panel came out the way it did.
--live-text: Emit selectable <text> elements instead of glyph outlines. Smaller files and selectable text, but the result depends on the reader having a metrically compatible font installed. The default emits outlines, which makes the file genuinely self-contained.
--strip: For a multi-panel document, also lay every panel out side by side in reading order, as one extra file. Ignored for a single panel.
--quiet: Suppress the wrote and note: lines. You do not normally want this: the notes are where the compiler tells you it did something you did not ask for.

Output naming#

A single-panel document writes to the requested name. A multi-panel document suffixes each panel with its own name, so the mapping back to the source stays obvious:

sequence.scene.yaml  →  sequence.establishing.svg
                        sequence.reaction.svg
                        sequence.strip.svg          (with --strip)

Exit status#

Code	Meaning
0	Compiled
1	The document could not be compiled — reported as a plain message, not a traceback
2	Usage error, or the source file does not exist

Every error the compiler raises inherits ScenetError, and all of them mean “your panel cannot be compiled” rather than “scenet broke”. They print as one line. A traceback from scenet is a bug worth reporting.

Examples#

scenet build examples/duel.panel.yaml

scenet build examples/duel.panel.yaml --core --debug

scenet build examples/sequence.scene.yaml --strip

scenet build examples/umbrella.script --strip -o out/umbrella.svg

`scenet schema`#

scenet schema [-o OUTPUT] [--scene]

Emits the JSON Schema for a panel document, derived from the same pydantic models the compiler validates against. Editors use it for completion and inline validation, so what the editor suggests cannot drift from what compiles — see editor support.

-o, --output PATH: Write to a file instead of stdout.
--scene: Emit the multi-panel scene schema instead of the single-panel one. A scene allows the same keys as a panel — where they act as defaults every panel inherits — plus panels:, whose members may additionally carry over:.

scenet schema -o panel.schema.json
scenet schema --scene -o scene.schema.json

The output is sorted and indented, so it is stable under version control.

`scenet --version`#

Prints the installed version and exits 0.

Determinism#

The same input always produces byte-identical output — no wall-clock time, no unseeded randomness, no absolute paths in the output. Two runs on different machines produce files you can compare with cmp.