A macOS console of grouped tabs over locally-rendered documentation sites. One tab is one doc repo on disk: selecting it starts a live-reloading server on an ephemeral loopback port and points a webview at it, so editing a .md file updates the tab immediately — no build step, no deploy, nothing published.

It's the third sibling to two existing apps: warden curates terminals, curator curates browser tabs, and lector curates local documentation the same way.

In use and released — see the latest release.

Download (no build): grab lector-<version>-macos.zip from the latest release, unzip, and move lector.app to /Applications. macOS only.

In Claude Code, run /lector:install — it checks prerequisites (offering to install any that are missing), builds lector from source into ~/.lector, installs lector.app to /Applications, and seeds your config.

Or install from a terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Lockyc/lector/main/install.sh | bash

Re-running either path updates lector (git pull + rebuild).

lector updates itself — no reinstall. On launch, every 6 hours while open, and via lector ▸ Check for Updates…, it checks GitHub for a newer release; when one exists the sidebar shows an Update available bar with a one-click Update & Relaunch.

• Confirm-to-install — nothing installs silently; you approve each update.
• Signed — each update is verified against lector's own minisign key before it installs, independent of Apple notarization.
• Opt out with auto_update = false (the Check for Updates… menu item still works).

Re-running install.sh is only needed to bootstrap the first updater-capable version, or to build from source.

• config.toml is the source of truth, in the same block structure as curator's and warden's: one or more [[window]] blocks, each containing loose [[window.tab]] entries and/or [[window.group]] sections of [[window.group.tab]]s. A lector tab points at a dir — a local doc repo path — rather than a URL. Edits hot-reload on save.
• [[window.root]] discovers repos for you. Point a root at a projects dir (dir, with an optional scan depth) and every git repo under it becomes a doc tab, shown as a collapsible folder tree with a ⟳ rescan button. Discovered tabs are lazy — their server starts on select.
• One tab, one live server. Selecting a tab starts a compositor serve loop on an ephemeral loopback port and points the tab's webview at it; the tab's title bar tracks whether that server is live. ⌘W unloads the active tab, stopping its server.
• Pop-out tabs — ⌘⇧O (or the pop-out icon on a row's letter tile) moves the active tab into its own window. Its server keeps running across the hop; closing the window returns the tab to where it came from.
• Windows and the home surface — ⌘⇧W closes a window and the Window menu reopens it. With no window open, lector shows a home surface listing every window; with no config, it offers a Create a starter config button. The Config menu opens the config file or reveals it in Finder.
• Native navigation. Mouse side-buttons drive back/forward through a tab's history, and a determinate progress bar tracks page loading — both alongside the sidebar's ◀ ▶ ⌂ nav pill.
• Keyboard tab navigation (the Tab menu) — ⌘⇧[ / ⌘⇧] cycle to the previous/next tab and ⌘1–⌘9 jump to a position; set tab_digit_keys = "cycle" to make ⌘1 / ⌘2 cycle instead (jumps shift to ⌘3–⌘9).
• Nothing deployed. There is no build/publish step in the loop — the whole point is to render a doc repo's working tree as you edit it.

~/.config/lector/config.toml (override with LECTOR_CONFIG). A fuller example is examples/config.toml.

density = "compact"

[[window]]
title  = "Docs"
colour = "#4a9"

  [[window.tab]]
  title        = "handbook"
  dir          = "~/Developer/handbook"
  load_on_open = true

  [[window.group]]
  name = "Specs"

    [[window.group.tab]]
    title = "api"
    dir   = "~/Developer/api/docs"

  [[window.root]]
  dir   = "~/Developer"
  depth = 4

The app binary doubles as a config tool — /Applications/lector.app/Contents/MacOS/lector:

• lector validate [path] prints the resolved windows and tabs plus any warnings, exiting non-zero on a load/parse/validation error.
• lector fmt [--check] [path] rewrites a config in lector's house TOML style; --check reports without writing.

Both default to the config path above.

Needs Rust and the Tauri CLI (cargo install tauri-cli --version ^2).

just run      # launch against examples/config.toml (never touches your real config)
just test     # cargo test --workspace
just gate     # the full pre-merge gate (no active [patch], fmt-check, clippy, tests, example-config fmt)
just build    # build lector.app
git config core.hooksPath .githooks   # once per clone: arms the pre-commit / pre-push hooks

lector is built on four pinned shared crates — compositor (the render/serve engine, one serve_handle() per open tab), chrome-core (the sidebar), config-core (config primitives, formatter, root discovery) and shell-core (release tooling and app shell). To build against a sibling checkout of one, see the *-dev / *-pin recipes in CLAUDE.md.

MIT — see LICENSE.