Quire — Integrated Research Environment

A desktop writing environment for researchers who work with citations, annotations, and source-heavy prose. Built with Tauri 2, Vue 3, and TypeScript.

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The problem it solves

Writing a cited paragraph currently means switching between your editor, a PDF reader, a reference manager, and a notes app — often several times per sentence. Quire keeps citations, source annotations, and prose in one place, so you can write and verify in the same window.

M0 feature set (current)

• WYSIWYG .qmd editor — ProseMirror via Tiptap, Georgia body type, section headings rendered inline
• Inline citations — [1] [2] superscripts backed by real .bib keys; hover for a quick card, click to open a full side panel
• @ citation autocomplete — type @ anywhere in the editor to get an Overleaf-style dropdown of your bibliography; filter by key, title, or author with ↑↓ to navigate and Enter/click to insert
• Unresolved citation indicator — any citeKey with no matching entry in the .bib renders as orange [?] with a tooltip naming the missing key
• Global bibliography — ~/.quire/references.bib is the single source of truth across all projects; seeded with sample entries on first run
• Hamburger menu — ≡ in the title bar opens a quick-access panel with New Document, Open File, and a Recent Files list with relative timestamps
• Open / Save / Save As — native file dialogs via tauri-plugin-dialog; documents saved as .qmd with YAML frontmatter
• Quarto export — "Export as PDF" invokes quarto render via tauri-plugin-shell; requires Quarto CLI in PATH
• Workbench view — annotation blocks from multiple sources with colour-coded source tags (placeholder data, M1 wires real Zotero annotations)
• PDF viewer — split layout: simulated PDF page on the left, citing-drafts + annotation cards on the right (placeholder, M2 wires real PDF.js)

Tech stack

Layer	Library
Desktop shell	Tauri 2
Frontend framework	Vue 3 + TypeScript (Vite 6)
Editor	Tiptap v2 (ProseMirror)
Routing	vue-router 4
Events	mitt
File dialogs	tauri-plugin-dialog
Shell execution	tauri-plugin-shell
Home dir (Rust)	dirs 5
Citation autocomplete	@tiptap/suggestion

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable)
• Node.js ≥ 18
• Tauri CLI v2
• Quarto CLI (optional — only needed for PDF export)

Development

npm install
npm run tauri dev

The app opens at its own window (not a browser tab). Hot-reload is active for the Vue frontend; Rust changes require a recompile.

Production build

npm run tauri build

Outputs a native installer in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

Project layout

quire/
├── src/                      # Vue frontend
│   ├── assets/               # Global CSS (style.css, editor.css)
│   ├── components/           # TitleBar, Sidebar, StatusBar, HamburgerMenu,
│   │                         # CitationNodeView, CitationTooltip, CitationPanel
│   ├── composables/          # useDocument, useFileOps, useQuire
│   ├── events.ts             # mitt event bus (cite:*, doc:*, export:*)
│   ├── extensions/           # CitationNode Tiptap extension
│   ├── router/               # vue-router routes
│   └── views/                # WriteView, WorkbenchView, PdfView
└── src-tauri/                # Rust backend
    └── src/lib.rs            # Tauri commands: open/save, .bib parsing, recent files

Data storage

On first launch Quire creates ~/.quire/ containing:

• references.bib — global bibliography, pre-seeded with four sample entries
• recent.json — list of recently opened files (max 15, managed automatically)

Every project reads from ~/.quire/references.bib by default. A local .bib file in the same directory as a .qmd document will take precedence if present.

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for the full milestone breakdown (M0–M6).

Development setup

• VS Code + Vue - Official + Tauri + rust-analyzer