StepForge is a local-first, open-source desktop app for Windows, with Linux (WIP) builds. It captures step-by-step workflows as screenshots, lets you annotate and describe each step in a focused three-pane editor, and exports the result to Markdown, DOCX, PPTX, PDF, HTML (WIP), GIF (WIP), confluence (WIP), Wiki.js (WIP), and image bundles (WIP). The current reconmendations for exporting is Markdown and PDF.

It is an independent desktop guide-capture tool inspired by publicly documented workflow patterns of commercial documentation tools like Folge. It contains no third-party branding, assets, or code from those tools.

Network and privacy contract. StepForge has no telemetry, no update checks, no license checks, and no cloud. Guides never leave your machine on their own. The only outbound network feature is the optional AI integration: when you enable it and configure an Ollama endpoint, StepForge sends step screenshots and text to that endpoint to generate titles and descriptions. By default that endpoint must be local (loopback); sending data to a remote host requires the explicit "Allow remote AI host" opt-in. See docs/PRIVACY.md for exactly what is collected and sent. Note that OCR (Tesseract) and its English language data are bundled production dependencies — Electron is not the only one.

Overview

The core workflow:

Capture — take full-screen, active-window, or region screenshots with configurable delay, pause/resume, and global hotkeys; or import images and paste from the clipboard.
Annotate — rectangles, ovals, lines, arrows, text, tooltips, numbered markers, blur, highlight, magnify, and crop on a resolution-independent annotation scene graph.
Describe — rich-text titles and descriptions, informational text blocks, code blocks, tables, step links, and placeholders.
Export — every exporter renders from the same normalized Render AST, so output is deterministic across formats.

What's Included

Guide library with folders, favorites, title search, full-text search, duplicate/move/delete, and a quick-actions palette (Ctrl+/).
Capture engine — the editor's Capture ▾ button offers full screen, active window, and region capture (the app hides itself during the shot), plus continuous capture sessions that grab a step on every click where the OS allows it, or on a 3/5/10 s auto-interval everywhere else. The REC bar shows the live count and the start/pause control. Delay, global hotkeys, click markers, clipboard paste, and PNG/JPEG/GIF import included. The full keyboard shortcut list lives under More ▾ → Keyboard shortcuts in the editor.
Three-pane editor — step tree with substeps, statuses (todo/in-progress/done), hidden/skipped steps, focused view (zoom/pan that never mutates the original image), autosave, and command-stack undo/redo.
Annotation canvas — normalized JSON scene graph with resolution-independent coordinates; annotations render identically in the editor and in every exporter.
Sharing & backups — single-file .sfgz archives (zip-based, path- traversal validated), linked guides with .lock-sfgz lock files and explicit save, plus automated snapshot backups and restore.
Exports — JSON, Markdown, Simple HTML, Rich HTML (checkboxes + floating TOC), PDF, animated GIF, image bundle, DOCX, and PPTX, with per-format export templates shareable as .sfglt files.
Settings & theming — system/light/dark themes, capture options, keyboard shortcuts, preview step count.

Everything except the Electron shell is dependency-free Node.js: the ZIP, PNG, GIF, PDF, DOCX, and PPTX writers are all implemented in this repository using only Node built-ins.

Getting Started

For a Windows installation, see docs/windows_installation or for a developer/more in depth walkthrough, see docs/GETTING_STARTED.md.

On Linux, install from a package built for your distro family: apt-based (Debian/Ubuntu) → docs/linux/apt.md; dnf-based (Fedora) → docs/linux/dnf.md. Wayland uses the XDG portal for screen capture and a hotkey/interval trigger (per-click capture with a marker needs X11 + xinput). The general developer walkthrough is docs/GETTING_STARTED_WITH_LINUX.md.

Requirements: Node.js 22.12+ and npm (pinned in .nvmrc; installs are refused on older Nodes because the packaging toolchain needs 22.12+).

npm ci             # one-time, installs the locked dependency tree
npm start          # launch StepForge

Dependencies are only ever installed by you, via npm ci — the app never downloads or repairs packages at runtime.

First run creates the local data directory (~/.local/share/stepforge on Linux (WIP), %APPDATA%/stepforge on Windows; override with STEPFORGE_DATA_DIR).

Testing

Please create your tests so that when the following is ran it automatically tests your test.

bash tests/run_test.sh

The runner executes every tests/checks/test_*.sh script; those scripts run the workflow test suites under tests/unit/ with node --test. The tests exercise real workflows like creating guides, round-tripping archives, exporting documents, and validating the bytes of the output, not string matching.

Building & Packaging

bash scripts/bootstrap-offline.sh   # verify toolchain availability
bash scripts/verify.sh              # full test suite + smoke checks
bash scripts/build-release.sh       # assemble runnable app directory
bash scripts/package-linux.sh       # local Linux packaging (WIP; not part of release)
npm run package:windows             # Windows installer .exe in releases/
pwsh scripts/package-windows.ps1    # same Windows installer build via PowerShell

See build/build_report.md for what was produced on this machine and which packaging tools were unavailable.

Offline Guarantee

The shipping app makes zero network calls. There is no telemetry, no update check, no license validation, no cloud sync, no account system, and no remote AI. Exports embed no remote fonts or CDN references. See docs/SECURITY.md for the threat model.

Contributing

See docs/CONTRIBUTING.md for the full contribution flow, including the issue-number requirement for every pull request and the clean-room rules.

Repository Layout

Project docs live in docs/ and prompt handoffs live in ai_prompts/.

See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the repo layout.

License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial

Basically, do whatever you want with it just don't make money off it or sell it.