IntentText Guide
What is IntentText, and why should you care?
IntentText is a plain-text document format that uses keywords to give every line a purpose. A .it file is readable by humans, parseable by code, and — when sealed — legally trustworthy.
Who is this for?
- Organizations building document workflows — contracts, policies, reports, invoices
- AI agents that need structured task plans, pipelines, and audit trails
- Writers who want professional output from plain text — themes, PDF export, figures
What's new in 1.25.0 — three things only .it does
- The workflow lives in the document. Declare who must approve, in what order with
route:/require:; the live state is derived (workflowState) and the approval order is hash-chained — so the system-of-record and the system-of-approval can't disagree. (Approval Workflows) - Forms that are fillable and sealable.
meta: type: form+input:fields (show-if:,compute:) become a record with two-party trust — the author seals the blank structure, the filler seals the answers. (Forms) - Authority certification.
certify:binds a signing key to a verified organization via a certification authority with a root→intermediate chain — verifiable offline. (Trust & Signing)
What you get
- Canonical + extension language model — 40 stable canonical keywords, plus localized keyword names and namespaced extension keywords
- Localized keyword names — 32 Arabic keywords (
عنوان:,مهمة:,صف:, …) ship in core, resolve to the canonical keyword, and round-trip as written - Zero synonym aliases — any non-reserved word is reliably your custom keyword, never silently reinterpreted; the open vocabulary is collision-free by design
- 8 built-in themes — corporate, minimal, warm, technical, print, legal, editorial, dark
- Full trust system — approve, sign, seal, verify, certify, amend; a seal that survives restyling
- Template engine —
{{variables}}, dynamic table rows, data merge - Query engine + folder-as-database — find any block across any number of files; a folder of
.itis a queryable database with no import - Conformance —
checkConformance(lax/strict) to gate documents before a system of record - CLI, npm, PyPI, MCP server, VS Code extension, web editor, Hub
Where to start
| You want to... | Start here |
|---|---|
| Get running in 5 minutes | Quick Start |
See everything .it can do | Capabilities |
| Understand the mental model | Core Concepts |
| Build a real document | Your First Document |
| Build a reusable template | Your First Template |
| See what orgs can do | For Organizations |
| Build agent workflows | For Agents |
| Write and publish | For Writers |
| Fill & seal a form | Forms, Review & Compliance |
| Query a folder of files | A Folder Is a Database |
| Seal and verify documents | Trust & Signing |
| Put the workflow in the doc | Approval Workflows |
Use .it as config | Config & Options |
| Keep seals intact, always | Byte Preservation |