Bookwright

Bookwright

A fully data-driven guide book engine. Write your books in Markdown, theme every pixel, gate pages behind progression, and ship them from a mod, a resource pack or straight from your modpack's config folder.

Bookwright adds no content of its own: it's the tool you use to document yours. One mod can ship any number of books, and every book can be changed by resource packs or by the modpack, without touching a single line of Java.

✨ Highlights

• Plain Markdown pages with a small header: headings, lists, tables, quotes, code blocks, links, colours, tooltips, inline items and key bindings.
• Real recipes from the game: crafting, smelting, blasting, smoking, campfire, stonecutting and smithing are drawn natively, including recipes changed by data packs or KubeJS. Show one recipe, or every recipe that makes or uses an item in a carousel.
• Interactive 3D multiblocks: rotate, zoom, step through layers, see the materials list and hover annotations. Write them as simple JSON layers or load a vanilla structure .nbt.
• Living entity previews, images, animated sprite strips and slideshows.
• Layout blocks: columns, tabs, collapsible sections, boxes, spotlights, callouts (> [!TIP]), tables of contents, page cards, buttons and progress bars.
• Progression and locks: show, hide, scramble or lock pages and categories with conditions on advancements, items, flags, mods, dimensions, biomes, XP level, effects, game mode, time of day and more. Locked pages get automatic hints, and players get a toast when a page unlocks.
• Conditional content: {if: mod:jei} … {else} … {/if} blocks that update live.
• 6 built-in themes (Hologram, Parchment, Obsidian, Verdant, Minimal, Light), and a theme system where every colour, texture, font, sound, effect and callout style is configurable, with inheritance.
• Templates, includes and variables to reuse content across pages and books.
• Multi-language: every book can be translated folder by folder, with automatic fallback to English.

🎮 For players

• One key (G by default) does it all: look at a block, hover an item in any inventory or in JEI, or press it in the world to open the right page.
• Search with #keywords and @categories, bookmarks, reading progress, unread markers, back/forward history, full-screen mode and keyboard shortcuts.
• Books can be placed on lecterns for everyone to read.
• With JEI, press R / U on any item inside a book to see its recipes and uses.

📦 For modpack makers

• Everything in config/bookwright/pack is loaded as an always-on resource pack and data pack, above every mod. Write your pack guide there, or override any page of any mod's book.
• Extend other books: add your own pages to a mod's book with a single "extend" line.
• Give books to new players on join, choose the default book opened by G, hide books you don't want, or force one theme on every book.
• Unlock pages from quests and scripts with flags: /bookwright flag @p set chapter_two works from FTB Quests, KubeJS, command blocks and functions.
• Dev mode (/bwc dev): a problems list with file names (unknown items, broken links, bad conditions…) and live reload every time you save a file.
• HTML export (/bwc export <book>): one self-contained web page that looks and works like the book, with recipes, structures and entities rendered exactly as in game. Perfect for a wiki.

🛠 For modders

Books are plain resources: you don't need any code to ship one. For custom behaviour there is a small API:

• custom block tags and inline tags (live energy values, quest names…),
• custom conditions and variables,
• recipe renderers for your own recipe types (or a simple JSON layout, no code needed),
• server-side flags and a command to open books for players.

🚀 A book in two files

assets/mymod/bookwright/books/manual/book.json

{
  "name": "Machine Manual",
  "theme": "bookwright:hologram",
  "item": { "color": "#3A6EA5" }
}

assets/mymod/bookwright/books/manual/en_us/entries/crusher.md

---
title: The Crusher
icon: mymod:crusher
items: [mymod:crusher]
---
The crusher turns **ores** into dust.

{recipe: mymod:crusher}

> [!TIP]
> Crush ores *before* smelting to double the output.

Run /bwc reload and open it with /bwc open mymod:manual. The full documentation is in the in-game Bookwright Guide, itself written with Bookwright (in English and French).

⌨ Commands

ℹ Requirements

• Minecraft 1.20.1 with Forge 47.1+
• Install on both client and server (the book item and progression sync live on the server).
• JEI is optional.

❓ FAQ

Can I use it in my modpack? Yes, of course.

Does it work without a server-side install? No. Like any mod that adds an item, it must be on both sides.

Do my players need to know Markdown? No. Only the people who write books do, and the guide explains everything with live examples.