#Changelog

#0.4.3

The tool describes itself with one sentence everywhere, and its documentation moved onto selfdoc's .stricttools/ layout.

#Fixes

• **The tool describes itself with one sentence everywhere, including --help.** The --help header, README, docs site, PyPI and npm metadata now carry the same line.

#0.4.2

Documentation frontmatter converted to TOML for the current selfdoc; no user-facing change.

#Infrastructure

• Documentation frontmatter converted to TOML for the current selfdoc; no user-facing change.

#0.4.1

The project describes itself consistently on PyPI, npm and in its README, and its documentation base is the unified site.

#Fixes

• The project describes itself consistently on PyPI, npm and in its README. The registry listings carried a terse tagline with no project URLs, no classifiers and no homepage, and the README opened without saying what predraw is.
• Documentation links point at the unified site. The declared docs base was the retired per-project host; it is https://smmh.dev/predraw/ now, so generated sitemaps, feeds and llms.txt name the address that serves the pages.

#0.4.0

Every argument and flag says whether it is required, and --schema no longer takes the empty string.

#Breaking

• **predraw validate --schema "" is refused instead of meaning "detect it".** The flag's third choice was the empty string, which was also its default, so absence was a value the caller could type -- two spellings of one request. The choices are the two real schemas now, each with a line of help in --help; omit the flag to have the schema detected from the file, as before.

#Features

• **--help says whether each argument and flag is required.** Every positional and every flag renders [required] or [optional], and the fallbacks that used to be framework-supplied defaults -- the current directory for build, pack, init and watch, packed.json for pack -o, the current directory for unpack -o -- are stated in each declaration's own help. Every command line that worked before works unchanged.

#0.3.0

strictspec validation for scene and config documents, a working CLI on strictcli 0.36.0, and an enforced strictcli floor.

#Breaking

• Breaking. --dry-run bool flag now requires explicit --no-dry-run to disable.
• Breaking. Scene and config documents are now validated by strictspec with hard errors instead of jsonschema. Every document must carry a top-level integer format_version (stamp existing files once with scripts/stamp_format_version.py); use elements must carry an explicit type; and a field may not use both its canonical and snake_case alias spelling. Documents previously tolerated (missing version, ambiguous alias pairs, numerically unrepresentable values, unknown keys) are now rejected.

#Fixes

• Fix pack command to use camelCase for stroke properties; watch excludes local-only files
• CI fix. Resolved dependency resolution failure by removing local path override for strictcli.
• Dependency installation no longer requires a machine-local checkout: uv.lock previously carried a local path for strictcli, breaking installs and CI outside the author's machine. It now resolves from PyPI (strictcli 0.24.0).
• **The predraw CLI works again on strictcli 0.36.0.** build --dry-run is unchanged for callers -- the flag is now supplied by the framework rather than declared by predraw, which is what the new version requires.
• **Installs now refuse an incompatible strictcli.** predraw declares strictcli>=0.36.0, so a fresh install can no longer resolve an older framework release that the CLI cannot register against.

#0.2.1

Fix CI: Node shim test activates venv so Python deps are available

• No user-facing changes.

#0.2.0

Stroke support (stroke, strokeWidth, strokeDasharray, strokeLinecap, strokeLinejoin, strokeOpacity)

#Features

• Place directions — place pipeline step now supports above, left, right in addition to below
• Schemas moved into package — predraw validate now works after pip install
• Stroke support (stroke, strokeWidth, strokeDasharray, strokeLinecap, strokeLinejoin, strokeOpacity)
• Gradient fills — linear-gradient and radial-gradient as fill/stroke objects, rendered as SVG <defs>
• predraw init — create a starter project with main.json + config.json
• predraw watch — auto-rebuild on file changes (mtime polling, 0.3s debounce)
• predraw --version flag
• predraw build --dry-run — preview output plan without rendering

#0.1.2

npm dual-publish — installable via npm i -g predraw (Node shim delegates to Python)

#Features

• npm dual-publish — installable via npm i -g predraw (Node shim delegates to Python)
• predraw validate documented in README

#0.1.1

Bounding box calculation for paths — place pipeline step now uses real geometry instead of font-size heuristic

#Features

• Bounding box calculation for paths — place pipeline step now uses real geometry instead of font-size heuristic
• Local fonts/ directory support — project-local fonts searched before system fonts for reproducible rendering
• Component property overrides — use elements can override fill (replaces) and opacity (multiplies) on referenced components

#0.1.0

Declarative JSON format for describing visual assets (rect, path, text, group, background)

#Features

• Component system: imports + use with property overrides (fill, opacity cascade)
• text-to-paths pipeline step via fonttools (converts text to SVG path outlines)
• Output formats: SVG, PNG (via cairosvg), WebP (via Pillow)
• predraw unpack — convert packed file back to directory with components
• JSON Schema for scene and config formats
• predraw validate — validate scene/config files against the JSON Schema
• Declarative JSON format for describing visual assets (rect, path, text, group, background)
• $style tokens with light/dark mode variants, resolved at render time
• Per-character text styling via charStyles
• Pipeline steps: center, place, group, text-to-paths
• Config-driven outputs with per-output mode selection (config.json)
• predraw build — render all outputs from a project directory or single file
• predraw pack — convert directory project to single portable JSON file