Installation

Quick install

curl -sSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/knot-literate-programming/knot/master/install.sh | bash

This script:

Detects your platform (macOS arm64/x86_64, Linux x86_64/arm64).
Downloads the prebuilt knot and knot-lsp binaries from the latest release.
Installs them to ~/.local/bin (override with --prefix DIR).
Installs the VS Code extension if the code command is available.
Checks that all prerequisites are present and tells you what is missing.

Prerequisites

Required

Tool	Purpose	Install
Typst	Compiles `.typ` → PDF	See below
Tinymist	Powers the VS Code live preview	See below

Typst can be installed with most package managers:

# macOS
brew install typst

# cargo
cargo install --locked typst-cli

Tinymist is the Typst language server. Download the binary for your platform from the Tinymist releases page and place it somewhere in your PATH.

Note: The Tinymist VS Code extension bundles its own binary, but Knot's LSP spawns a separate Tinymist subprocess and needs the binary available in PATH independently.

Per language (install what you use)

Tool	Purpose	Install
R	Execute R chunks	CRAN
Air	Format R code in VS Code	See Air docs
Python 3	Execute Python chunks	python.org, conda, pyenv…
Ruff	Format Python code in VS Code	`pip install ruff`

You only need the tools for the languages you actually use. If your document has no R chunks, you do not need R.

Build from source

If there is no prebuilt binary for your platform, or if you want to work from the latest development version:

git clone https://github.com/knot-literate-programming/knot.git
cd knot

# Install the CLI and LSP
cargo install --path crates/knot-cli
cargo install --path crates/knot-lsp

# Install the VS Code extension
bash scripts/install-vscode-dev.sh

You need Rust 1.80+ and Node.js 20+.

Verifying the installation

knot --version
knot-lsp --version
typst --version
tinymist --version

All four commands should print a version string without errors.

Knot — User Guide