# Documentation for the book workflow.

This guide describes the current design and the milestone that owns each feature. Installation instructions will appear with a validated public artifact.

## Installation waits for an artifact

No public installer is listed for Windows, Linux or macOS. The Development page will carry the version, operating system, architecture, checksum, signing status and known limits when an artifact becomes available.

- Windows and Linux pre-release builds are unsigned before 1.0.
- Windows can show an unknown-publisher warning.
- The Linux AppImage needs FUSE 2 or its extract-and-run mode.
- macOS remains to verify; no macOS installation claim is made.

## Start with a plain Markdown folder

M1’s New book action creates a plain Markdown folder. Existing folders can be recognized as Markdown books, mdbindery books, mdeditorial projects or Mdnarra books from their files. The binder follows the project’s reading-order owner.

- UTF-8, with or without a byte-order mark, is the encoding M1 edits.
- An unsupported encoding opens read-only instead of being converted silently.
- A save with no edits writes nothing.
- Record files open read-only in M1; the plugins own their editing workflows later.

## Write, read and search

Write provides a live Markdown preview; Source exposes the text directly. Read follows the book’s reading order. Book-wide search builds its full-text index in memory rather than storing another copy of the prose in the cache.

- Word counts use the book language and exclude Markdown markup, front matter, comments, code and link targets.
- Spellcheck uses bundled English, Russian, Ukrainian and Spanish dictionaries in M1.
- Automatic hyphenation and book stylesheets in Read are deliberately outside M1.

## Build with the integrated tools

M3 adds the tool runner and toolchain manager. mdbindery checks and builds EPUB/PDF output; mdrestyler measures prose against a voice profile. Their optional external tools are downloaded only with the user’s consent.

## Privacy, agents and recovery

Plain folders and local git need no mdquire sign-in. GitHub authorization is only for GitHub work. Agent features begin in M4, with explicit material boundaries and approvals. The native file helper keeps recovery versions when its checked-save rules require them; a conflict is reported rather than silently overwritten.

## Keyboard and accessibility notes

The interface specification includes keyboard operation, visible focus, reduced motion and four interface languages. The complete instructions and accessibility audit belong to M7, so this site does not claim that audit has already passed.