Get Started

1. Try it now — no install

The fastest path is the Playground: type Carve on the left, watch the HTML render live on the right. Nothing to set up.

Or skim the Cheat Sheet — the whole syntax fits on one page.

2. Render Carve in your project

There are two reference parsers. Both turn a Carve string into HTML.

Registry packages are in progress

The npm and Packagist releases are not published yet. For now, install the parsers straight from their Git repositories. The package names below are the ones the published releases will use.

JavaScript / TypeScript — carve-js

npm install github:markup-carve/carve-js

import { carveToHtml } from '@markup-carve/carve'

const html = carveToHtml('/italic/, *bold*, and a heading')

carveToHtml is the one-call entry point; the package also exposes the AST (parse) and the Markdown / plain-text / ANSI renderers.

PHP — carve-php

composer require markup-carve/carve-php

use Carve\CarveConverter;

$html = (new CarveConverter())->convert('/italic/, *bold*, and a heading');

CarveConverter::convert() returns HTML; the package also ships parse() plus Markdown / plain-text / ANSI renderers and HTML/Markdown/Djot converters.

3. Learn the syntax

• Cheat Sheet — every construct, one scannable page.
• Examples — Carve source next to the exact HTML it produces.
• Case Study — the full design rationale and normative spec.

Build your own parser

Carve's grammar is small and unambiguous. To implement it in another language, start from Build Your Own Implementation and the Formal Grammar.

File extension: .crv