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TeXlyre Joins NGI0 Commons: Project Roadmap and Milestones

· 3 min read
Fares Abawi
Fares Abawi
TeXlyre author & maintainer

TeXlyre is now funded by the NLnet Foundation through the NGI0 Commons fund. This post lays out the project roadmap and the tasks that will be delivered over the course of the grant.

Sponsors

About NGI0 Commons

NGI0 Commons is part of the European Commission's Next Generation Internet initiative, run by NLnet. It supports projects building the free, open, trustworthy internet of the future. The full list of funded projects is available at nlnet.nl/project.

Roadmap​

The grant covers 8 tasks, broken into milestones. Each task below links to its completion report when available. Checked items are completed and reported.

Task 1: WebAssembly engine modernization​

Upgrade TeXlyre's WASM-based LaTeX compilation from TeX Live 2020 to contemporary tooling, and add SyncTeX for bidirectional source/PDF navigation.

  • 1a. On-demand TeX Live package server with browser-side package fetching
  • 1b. LuaLaTeX support via modernized BusyTeX, with compatibility verified against contemporary packages
  • 1c. SyncTeX bidirectional jump-to-source and jump-to-PDF navigation
Completed

Full report: WebAssembly engine upgrade

Task 2: Chelys proof-of-concept, local LSP bridge​

Introduce Chelys as a local companion application that relays Language Server Protocol messages between TeXlyre and local LSP providers (JabRef, Zotero Better BibTeX, Tinymist, and others).

  • 2a. Local Chelys application with WebSocket-based LSP communication
  • 2b. Chelys running both as standalone background service and as a Tauri desktop extension

Task 3: Peer-to-peer LSP modulation​

Modulate LSP messages over TeXlyre's existing Yjs peer-to-peer network, so one collaborator's local language server can serve the whole session.

  • 3a. LSP message serialization and transport over the Yjs sync layer
  • 3b. WebRTC-based relay for secure remote LSP access

Task 4: Chelys plugin system​

Graduate Chelys from proof-of-concept to a production-ready plugin system for managing local service providers.

  • 4a. Plugin mechanism with install, update, remove, and dependency management
  • 4b. Access control, usage logging, and rate limiting for plugin operations

Task 5: Local typesetting engine support​

Extend Chelys to run local typesetting engines (LuaTeX, optionally LuaMetaTeX, PreTeXt, SILE) using the same peer-to-peer modulation layer built for LSP.

  • 5a. Compile dispatch, file transfer, and PDF retrieval between TeXlyre and Chelys
  • 5b. Typesetting engine lifecycle integrated into the Chelys plugin system

Task 6: Chelys distributed storage, local foundation​

Add encrypted local storage to Chelys, accessible remotely through TeXlyre but scoped strictly to project files.

  • 6a. Secure end-to-end encrypted local storage, restricted to TeXlyre-managed projects
  • 6b. Evaluate and optionally integrate a decentralized storage backend (Solid Pods, Garage, or similar)

Task 7: Chelys distributed storage, multi-endpoint redundancy​

Enable replication of encrypted project data across multiple Chelys instances, with decryption only at the user's end.

  • 7a. Encrypted replication across multiple Chelys endpoints
  • 7b. Sync and conflict resolution for redundant storage

Task 8: Document diff and review system​

Implement version comparison and change review inside TeXlyre.

  • 8a. Diff engine with inline visual highlighting of additions, deletions, and modifications
  • 8b. Review interface for accepting and rejecting individual changes, integrated with collaboration and version history

Following Updates​

Each completed task will get a dedicated report post here on the blog, linked from the roadmap above. Development happens in the open across the TeXlyre organization on GitHub, with one repository per component (texlyre, texlyre-busytex, texlyre-busytex-build, and later chelys).