Changelog

All notable changes to toonstrip, newest first. Versions are repository versions; the npm packages are versioned independently, so each entry lists the package versions it shipped. Written for users; the engineering history behind each entry is in WORKLOG.md.

The format follows Keep a Changelog.

0.15.9 — 2026-10-26

Packages: none published; every package is unchanged since 0.15.8.

Changed

The repository now builds and tests on Node 24 LTS (.nvmrc 24.22.1, root engines >=24, @types/node ^24). Node 22 reaches end of life on 2027-04-30; Node 24.22.1 also carries the Brotli decoder fix for CVE-2026-111497. No runtime or API change.

0.15.7 — 2026-09-07

Packages: @toonstrip/asset-packager 0.3.0; everything else unchanged since 0.15.6.

Added

faceScale: a pack-wide or per-character factor (source.json’s spec.faceScale / characters[].faceScale) that resamples a face before packing, anchored on its own join point (the chin), so the join doesn’t move — only the head’s size does. Default 1 keeps every existing pack’s big-headed cartoon proportion (@toonstrip/pack-comic-chat unaffected); below 1 shrinks the head for a realistic human proportion. This is the only place a head:body ratio is authored — @toonstrip/core’s renderer composites a face onto its torso at a strict 1:1 pixel join and never scales one independently of the other, by design, so proportion has to be baked into the packed sheet itself.

Fixed

A sheet’s row-boundary detection (grid.ts’s boundaries()) could drift a row boundary through the next row’s printed label into its art, when the current row’s own content ran up to the nominal boundary with no genuine empty line nearby — the search would keep looking past the label for the first empty line, landing well past it. Confirmed in a packed character sheet’s face slice: the trimmed “NEUTRAL” face box contained the real face art plus a baked-in label from the row below, which corrupted the convention join (bottom-center of the trimmed box) and produced a floating-head gap on every character in the pack. A label-banded sheet now caps how far a row boundary may drift past its nominal position, since the true boundary is known (by the template’s own generation contract) to sit within a few px of it.
A face is head-only per docs/asset-image-spec.md §3 — confirmed against @toonstrip/pack-comic-chat’s actual reference art, which has zero neck (the written spec previously said otherwise: “a short neck stub below the chin”). A model that draws a neck stub anyway, or reproduces the guide’s own dashed lines below the chin despite being told not to, now has that erased before the cell is ever measured (sheet.ts’s eraseBelowChin, using the same chin fraction template.ts’s guide draws at). The guide itself no longer draws a neck-stub box, and the generated prompt text no longer asks for one.

0.15.6 — 2026-09-06

Packages: @toonstrip/asset-packager 0.2.5; everything else unchanged since 0.15.5. (0.2.4 was published with an unresolved workspace:* dependency on @toonstrip/core — plain npm publish doesn’t resolve the workspace protocol the way pnpm publish does, the same mistake 0.2.1 made. Broken for anyone installing it standalone; skip straight to 0.2.5.)

Fixed

toonstrip-pack template’s character-sheet guide and default prompt text described a “shoulders to waist” bust, which doesn’t match this format’s Comic Chat origins — the real ported roster (@toonstrip/pack-comic-chat’s dan/anna, etc.) is a full standing body, head composited on separately, feet cut off by the canvas edge. The guide now draws a full figure (shoulders, arms, legs, feet) instead of a waist-cropped torso, and docs/asset-image-spec.md §3 is corrected to match.
The same guide was dead-symmetric (a plain circle for the head, a bilaterally-symmetric body outline) with no visual cue for which way the character faces, even though the renderer mirrors a figure’s own art horizontally to face the other way in a two-shot (drawFigure’s mirror transform) rather than redrawing or re-angling anything. A model reproducing a symmetric guide has every reason to draw a symmetric, camera-facing character, which then can’t be mirrored convincingly. The guide (and the auto-generated prompt text) now bias toward a 3/4, screen-right-facing pose: a profile notch on the face, an asymmetric near/far body outline on the torso.
The torso guide gave zero headroom above the shoulder line, so any of the tool’s own default gesture poses (torso-WAVE, POINTOTHER, …) had nowhere to put a raised or extended arm without it clipping the cell edge. The guide (and prompt text) now leave real margin above the shoulders and to the sides for that.

Added

Sheet-sourced characters are now auto-corrected for scale instead of only warned about. Each kind’s NEUTRAL cell is rescaled toward the middle of the pack’s fill window (was: left alone unless clearly outside it, which let a character balanced right on the window’s edge tip a sibling pose outside it independently), then every other pose of that kind is rescaled to match NEUTRAL if it drifted more than 12% (was: warned and left for a person to notice and re-prompt an image model to fix). Both scale about the bottom-centre of the drawing — where the actual join lives for both kinds (a face’s neck-stub base, a torso’s feet) — so correcting scale can’t pull a torso’s feet away from the bottom edge it’s required to touch. Enlarging backs off (analytically first, with a short empirical refinement for resampling bleed) to whatever the drawing’s own headroom actually allows rather than clipping past it or giving up on any enlargement at all when the ideal target isn’t reachable. A correction over 50% still gets a diagnostic, reworded from “this pose won’t composite right, fix it” to “auto-corrected, worth a glance.”
The sheet slicer’s “drawing runs into the gutter” check now runs after scale normalization instead of on the raw slice — a slice that ran into the gutter only because the drawing was oversized is exactly what the scale correction above fixes, so checking before that ran was flagging a problem already about to be resolved.

0.15.5 — 2026-09-06

Packages: @toonstrip/asset-packager 0.2.3; everything else unchanged since 0.15.4.

Fixed

toonstrip-pack template’s reference sheets no longer bake instructional guide text ("centre square is kept", "horizon", "chin rule — base of neck stub sits here", etc.) into the cell content area at readable contrast. Image models generating from the reference would sometimes reproduce that text verbatim as if it were scene content, even though the prompt explicitly says not to — text is a much easier thing for a model to copy than “ignore this per an instruction.” The graphical guides (dashed horizon/centre-line, cell bounding boxes) are unchanged; only the spelled-out captions inside the content area are gone. The cropped id-label header band is unaffected.

0.15.4 — 2026-09-05

Packages: @toonstrip/astro 0.1.12; everything else unchanged since 0.15.3.

Fixed

@toonstrip/astro no longer crashes an Astro static build (astro build) with ReferenceError: HTMLElement is not defined. If you’re on @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11 or earlier, upgrade to 0.1.12.

0.15.3 — 2026-09-05

Packages: @toonstrip/core 0.1.8, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.4, @toonstrip/element 0.1.10, @toonstrip/vue 0.1.2, @toonstrip/react 0.1.3, @toonstrip/next 0.1.2.

Fixed

A server-side rendering crash (ReferenceError: HTMLElement is not defined) is fixed in @toonstrip/element, and inherited by @toonstrip/react, @toonstrip/vue, and @toonstrip/next — all now safe to import with no DOM present (SSR, static builds, tests).
A few versions published earlier the same day (@toonstrip/react 0.1.1, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.2/0.2.3, @toonstrip/element 0.1.9, @toonstrip/vue 0.1.1) failed to import at all and are deprecated on npm. Upgrade past them to the versions above.

0.15.2 — 2026-09-05

Packages: @toonstrip/next 0.1.2 (deprecated), @toonstrip/react 0.1.3, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.4.

Changed

@toonstrip/next is deprecated. Its "use client" <ComicStrip> now lives directly in @toonstrip/react, and its SSR placeholder helper is renderPlaceholder from @toonstrip/cli. Existing installs keep working — next is now a compatibility re-export, not removed — but new Next.js projects should import from react/cli directly.

Fixed

Internal cleanup across the rendering core, CLI, and asset packager (dead code, duplicate helpers, a faster schema validator). No user-visible behavior change.

0.15.1 — 2026-09-04

Packages: @toonstrip/asset-packager 0.2.0 published.

Added

New docs page for @toonstrip/asset-packager: the full init → validate → build --preview loop, both single-file and sheet inputs, and the CLI/library API.

0.15.0 — 2026-09-03

Packages: @toonstrip/asset-packager 0.2.0 (built, not yet published); everything else unchanged (@toonstrip/schema 0.1.3, @toonstrip/core 0.1.7, @toonstrip/element 0.1.8, @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.1, @toonstrip/react 0.1.0, @toonstrip/vue 0.1.0, @toonstrip/next 0.1.0, @toonstrip/pack-comic-chat 0.1.1).

Added

Build a pack from one image instead of many. @toonstrip/asset-packager now takes sheets: a single image holding a grid of labelled cells, sliced into many pack assets. A character sheet carries a character’s poses; a backdrop sheet carries whole scenes — as many backdrops as the grid holds, from one prompt. The grid is whatever shape you declare, and several sheets of different shapes can live in one pack.
Why it matters for generated art. A sheet is one generation pass, so a character’s hair, line weight and head size cannot drift between poses the way they do across separate generations — and because every cell shares one scale, the packager aligns each pose to the character’s neutral cell and corrects a pose drawn a few pixels off, instead of deriving a slightly wrong join from that pose alone.
toonstrip-pack template writes the reference sheet to hand an image model, and prints both the source.json fragment for it and a prompt skeleton to fill in.
Flat backgrounds are accepted on sheets. Few image models can emit real transparency, so a sheet arriving on plain white is keyed out per cell (a white shirt stays white — keying floods in from the edges), along with printed labels and painted gutters.
New diagnostics, each naming its cell: a blank cell an id points at, more ids than cells, a drawing running into the gutter, a pose drawn at a different scale from neutral, two near-identical backdrop scenes, and a grid too dense to carry the pack’s cell size.
Sheets and files mix. Where both describe the same asset the individual file wins, so one weak cell can be regenerated on its own — using the sheet as its reference — and dropped in without touching source.json.
Documented in docs/asset-sheets.md; the agent skill now teaches the sheet workflow and the two-reference prompt pattern alongside the per-pose one.

0.14.0 — 2026-09-03

Packages: unchanged (@toonstrip/schema 0.1.3, @toonstrip/core 0.1.7, @toonstrip/element 0.1.8, @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.1, @toonstrip/react 0.1.0, @toonstrip/vue 0.1.0, @toonstrip/next 0.1.0, @toonstrip/pack-comic-chat 0.1.1). @toonstrip/asset-packager 0.1.0 built, not yet published.

Added

Build an asset pack from plain PNGs. @toonstrip/asset-packager (the toonstrip-pack command) turns a directory of one-pose-per-file transparent PNGs into a valid pack: it checks the images, packs the sprite sheets, works out where each head joins its neck, and writes pack.json and the per-character manifests. Adding a character no longer means hand-writing a rect table. It runs entirely offline — no model, no network; it only ever reads finished images, whether they came from an image model, Procreate or Aseprite.
The asset image specification. docs/asset-image-spec.md in the repository states the rules an input PNG has to follow — naming, canvas, where to place the drawing, what has to stay consistent between a character’s poses — tightly enough that an image-generation prompt can hit them.
A join preview. toonstrip-pack build --preview joins.png composites each character’s neutral face and torso and marks the derived join, so a head that lands off the neck is visible before you ship the pack. A wrong join still produces a structurally valid pack, so this is the check that matters.
The agent skill now covers art, not just documents. skills/toonstrip/SKILL.md teaches an AI coding agent how to write per-pose generation prompts that satisfy the spec, then run the packager and act on its errors and warnings.

0.13.0 — 2026-09-03

Packages: unchanged (@toonstrip/schema 0.1.3, @toonstrip/core 0.1.7, @toonstrip/element 0.1.8, @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.1, @toonstrip/pack-comic-chat 0.1.1). @toonstrip/next 0.1.0 built, not yet published.

Added

A Next.js wrapper. @toonstrip/next wraps @toonstrip/react’s <ComicStrip> behind an App Router-safe client boundary, so it drops straight into a Server Component. A minimal App Router example (examples/next-app) ships alongside it. Documented at Next.js reference.
Server-rendered placeholders. @toonstrip/next/server’s renderPlaceholder renders a real PNG of your strip on the server, so a Next.js page shows the actual strip content immediately — in “view source”, and with JavaScript disabled — instead of a blank shell, then swaps to the live canvas on hydration with no layout shift.

Fixed

@toonstrip/element no longer throws when imported on a server. This was already the practical blocker for using @toonstrip/react or @toonstrip/vue in any server-rendering framework; it’s now safe to import them there.

0.12.0 — 2026-09-03

Packages: unchanged (@toonstrip/schema 0.1.3, @toonstrip/core 0.1.7, @toonstrip/element 0.1.8, @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.1, @toonstrip/pack-comic-chat 0.1.1). @toonstrip/vue 0.1.0 built, not yet published.

Added

A Vue wrapper. @toonstrip/vue’s <ComicStrip> component mounts @toonstrip/element’s <comic-strip> custom element and updates it reactively on a document/packs change — no remount, same pattern as @toonstrip/react. A minimal Vite + Vue example (examples/vue-vite) ships alongside it. Documented at Vue reference.

0.11.0 — 2026-09-03

Packages: unchanged (@toonstrip/schema 0.1.3, @toonstrip/core 0.1.7, @toonstrip/element 0.1.8, @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.1, @toonstrip/pack-comic-chat 0.1.1). @toonstrip/react 0.1.0 built, not yet published.

Added

A React wrapper. @toonstrip/react’s <ComicStrip> component mounts @toonstrip/element’s <comic-strip> custom element via a ref and updates it on a document/packs prop change without remounting. A minimal Vite + React example (examples/react-vite) ships alongside it. Documented at React reference.

0.10.0 — 2026-09-03

Added

No build step at all. A new example (examples/vanilla-html) embeds a live strip in a single .html file — no package.json, no bundler, opens straight from disk or any static file server. See the new “No build step at all” section on the Plain HTML doc.
An agent skill. skills/toonstrip/SKILL.md teaches an AI coding agent the ComicStripDocument shape, the emotion-wheel angles, and the default pack’s real character/backdrop ids, so it stops guessing and validates what it writes before handing it back. Documented at Agent skill.

0.9.0 — 2026-09-03

Packages: unchanged (@toonstrip/schema 0.1.3, @toonstrip/core 0.1.7, @toonstrip/element 0.1.8, @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.1). Site only.

Changed

Playground layout. The strip now previews full width along the bottom of the screen, with the visual configuration on the left and the JSON editor on the right above it. Drag either divider to resize, and the proportions are remembered for your next visit. The whole editor fits one screen: each section scrolls on its own instead of the page scrolling. The JSON pane collapses to a slim bar when you want the width.
Panels are tabs. The configuration side leads with a Strip tab for asset packs, presets and a summary of the document, followed by one tab per panel. Clicking a panel in the preview jumps to its tab, and the tab you are editing stays outlined in the preview.
Rebuilt controls. Backdrop and character pickers, camera and pose selectors, the speaker and balloon menus, the width slider and the Presets and Export menus were all rebuilt on a consistent component set, with clearer focus states and full keyboard operation. Phones keep the Configure / JSON / Preview tabs and the slide-up preview.

Fixed

Removing a panel no longer leaves the editor pointing at a panel that is gone.

0.8.9 — 2026-09-02

Packages: @toonstrip/core 0.1.7, @toonstrip/element 0.1.8, @toonstrip/astro 0.1.11, @toonstrip/cli 0.2.1 (all published)

Fixed

Korean balloon text rendered in a brush script on Windows (Gungseo) and in arbitrary fallbacks elsewhere. The comic font stack now names Noto Sans KR, then the platform Korean sans faces, ahead of the generic; Latin text is unchanged.
The element now waits for document.fonts before first paint and repaints when a face finishes loading late, so a page-declared webfont reaches the canvas.

Added

toonstrip render --font <file> registers a font file (for example Noto Sans KR) before drawing. COMIC_FONT_FAMILY and TITLE_FONT exported from @toonstrip/core.
The site declares Noto Sans KR (Korean subset, fetched only when drawn) and the kitchen sink has a Korean strip check.

0.8.8 — 2026-09-02

Packages: @toonstrip/cli 0.2.0 (published)

Added

The site is live at toonstrip.danielkimdev.com: intro, docs, playground, and this changelog. Every @toonstrip/* README links to it.

0.8.7 — 2026-09-02

Packages: @toonstrip/cli 0.2.0 (published 2026-09-02 with 0.8.8)

Added

toonstrip render <doc.json> --out strip.png: render a Comic Strip Document to one PNG in Node, with the element’s column policy and figure selection. --width, --scale, --pack <dir> (repeatable), --transparent, --background. Also exported as renderDocument().