Bindery

Markdown book authoring tools for VS Code: typography formatting (curly quotes, em-dashes, ellipses), multi-language chapter export (DOCX, EPUB, PDF), and dialect conversion.

Features

Typography Formatting

Converts plain-text typography to professional typographic characters:

| Input | Output | Description | |-------|------—|-------------| | … | … | Ellipsis | | — | — | Em-dash (preserves --- for markdown HR) | | ”text” | ”text” | Curly double quotes | | ’text’ | ’text’ | Curly single quotes | | don’t | don’t | Smart apostrophes |

HTML comments are preserved and not modified.

How to use:

• Right-click a markdown file → Format Typography
• Format Document (Shift+Alt+F) — registered as a markdown formatter
• Format on Save — enable bindery.formatOnSave in settings
• Explorer — right-click a folder → Format All Markdown in Folder

Chapter Merge & Export

Merges ordered chapter files into a single document with TOC generation:

• Markdown (.md) — with table of contents and separators
• DOCX (.docx) — via Pandoc, with page breaks and optional cover image
• EPUB (.epub) — via Pandoc, with chapter splitting and optional cover
• PDF (.pdf) — via Pandoc (intermediate DOCX) + LibreOffice headless conversion, giving consistent output quality across all platforms

For UK exports, the extension auto-generates Story/UK from Story/EN at export time, applies US→UK spelling conversion before merge, and removes Story/UK again after export completes.

How to use:

• Editor toolbar — click the $(book) Bindery Export button (visible on markdown files)
• Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) → search “Bindery”

Supported commands:

• Bindery: Merge Chapters → Markdown
• Bindery: Merge Chapters → DOCX
• Bindery: Merge Chapters → EPUB
• Bindery: Merge Chapters → PDF
• Bindery: Merge Chapters → All Formats
• Bindery: Find Probable US→UK Words
• Bindery: Add Substitution Rule
• Bindery: Open translations.json
• Bindery: Initialise Workspace
• Bindery: Setup AI Assistant Files
• Bindery: Register MCP Server

AI Assistant Integration (MCP)

Bindery includes a bundled MCP server that makes your book's chapters, notes, and search index available to AI assistants directly inside VS Code.

GitHub Copilot Chat — tools are registered automatically when the extension activates. Use #bindery_search, #bindery_get_chapter, etc. in chat.

Claude for VS Code / Codex — run Bindery: Register MCP Server once per workspace. This writes .vscode/mcp.json pointing to the bundled server. Both extensions pick this up automatically on next reload.

Available tools: bindery_health, bindery_index_build, bindery_index_status, bindery_get_text, bindery_get_chapter, bindery_get_overview, bindery_get_notes, bindery_search, bindery_retrieve_context, bindery_format.

File Discovery

The extension automatically discovers and orders your chapter files:

Story/
  EN/                          ← language folder
    Prologue.md                ← first
    Act I/                     ← act folders (sorted by Roman numeral)
      Chapter1.md              ← chapters (sorted by number)
      Chapter2.md
    Act II/
      Chapter9.md
    Epilogue.md                ← last

Configuration

Dialect Conversion

Substitution rules are applied in tiers (later tiers win):

1. Built-in — common US→UK conversions
2. General — bindery.generalSubstitutions in VS Code user settings
3. Project — .bindery/translations.json in the workspace

You can extend conversion rules without editing code:

• Run Bindery: Find Probable US→UK Words to scan Story/EN for likely US spellings (like -ize forms), then add selected entries.
• Run Bindery: Add Substitution Rule to manually add one mapping.

Language Configuration

Each language entry supports:

{
  “code”: “EN”,
  “folderName”: “EN”,
  “chapterWord”: “Chapter”,
  “actPrefix”: “Act”,
  “prologueLabel”: “Prologue”,
  “epilogueLabel”: “Epilogue”
}

Adding a New Language

Add to .bindery/settings.json (or bindery.languages in VS Code settings):

{
  “languages”: [
    { “code”: “EN”, “folderName”: “EN”, “chapterWord”: “Chapter”, “actPrefix”: “Act”, “prologueLabel”: “Prologue”, “epilogueLabel”: “Epilogue” },
    { “code”: “FR”, “folderName”: “FR”, “chapterWord”: “Chapitre”, “actPrefix”: “Acte”, “prologueLabel”: “Prologue”, “epilogueLabel”: “Épilogue” }
  ]
}

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85+
• Git (recommended) — needed for version tracking and review features (get_review_text, git_snapshot). Auto-initialised during workspace setup. Install
• Pandoc (needed for DOCX/EPUB/PDF export) — Install
• LibreOffice (needed for PDF export) — used to convert the intermediate DOCX to PDF
  • Linux/WSL: sudo apt install libreoffice
  • Windows: Download from libreoffice.org, then set bindery.libreOfficePath to the full path of soffice.exe (e.g. C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\soffice.exe)

Building from Source

cd vscode-ext
npm install
npm run compile

To install locally:

npm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package
code —install-extension bindery-0.2.0.vsix