mant-core

mant-core is ManT's renderer-independent document engine. It resolves local documents through mant-sources into the contracts from mant-ast, builds semantic projections, and produces deterministic output without owning a terminal or command-line process.

What this crate provides

Registered Markdown lookup through the read-only mant-sources boundary.
A conservative, source-positioned Markdown parser with explicit loss diagnostics and optional embedded tldr content.
Bounded native manual loading, explicit leaf-file symlink support, root-constrained .so alias resolution, and man(7)/mdoc(7) lowering on every supported platform.
Semantic outlines containing addressable sections and role-aware entries.
Excerpt selection and literal or regular-expression search with generated Markdown coordinates.
Markdown, text, man-style text, and JSON renderers over one normalized AST.
Installed-client and private tldr cache discovery and updates.

Process argument parsing, MCP transport, and interactive presentation remain outside this crate.

Basic use

The in-memory Markdown path is deterministic and works on every supported platform:

use mant_ast::OutlineDetail;
use mant_core::{
    build_outline_with_detail, query_markdown_text, render_outline_text,
};

let query = query_markdown_text(
    "# Demo\n\n## Options\n\n- `--verbose`: Show more detail.\n",
    Some("demo.md".to_owned()),
)?;
let outline = build_outline_with_detail(&query, OutlineDetail::Entries)?;

println!("{}", render_outline_text(&outline));
# Ok::<(), Box<dyn std::error::Error>>(())

Use resolve_query or resolve_query_with_policy when a caller needs the full document bundle. Use execute_query to validate, resolve, and materialize the request's view through one engine boundary. Use parse_markdown when the caller needs the parsed document and tldr preface without query composition. DocumentResolver can be reused when several operations must share one lazy filesystem snapshot; constructing a new resolver refreshes discovery.

Platform behavior

Platform	Markdown engine	Native man/mdoc engine
Linux with glibc	Yes	Bundled `libmandoc-rs`
macOS	Yes	Bundled `libmandoc-rs`
Windows	Yes	Bundled `libmandoc-rs`

Every supported target compiles libmandoc-rs. Windows uses its memory-only C transport while Rust owns file I/O, decompression, paths, and .so redirects.

Layering

mant-core returns owned mant-ast values and does not expose libmandoc C structures. Applications that only need raw roff syntax should use libmandoc-rs directly. Applications that need the complete command or reader should install mant.

Architecture and source-resolution details are documented in the ManT native-core reference.

License