Get started

Install

quarto add seandavi/quarto-livefigures

Pin a release for reproducible builds:

quarto add seandavi/quarto-livefigures@v0.7.0

The only external requirement is Node.js ≥ 18 on your PATH. Everything else — renderers, fonts, the rasterizer — ships inside the extension, and all local formats render fully offline. livefigures is listed in the official Quarto extension listing.

Enable

In _quarto.yml (or a document’s front matter):

filters:
  - at: pre-ast
    path: livefigures

Note

The at: pre-ast placement makes cross-references work on inline code-block figures. If you only use file-referenced figures, a plain filters: [livefigures] also works.

Use

Reference a source file with ordinary figure syntax:

![Overall architecture](figures/architecture.excalidraw){#fig-arch width=80%}

As @fig-arch shows …

Or write small diagrams inline:

```{.dot #fig-deps fig-cap="Build dependencies"}
digraph { quarto -> livefigures -> figures }
```

Rendered assets land in a content-addressed _livefigures/ cache — add it to .gitignore; it is a build artifact. Re-renders happen only when the source, options, or extension version change.

Output formats

HTML family (articles, websites, books, dashboards, RevealJS): embedded-font SVG — correct offline and with embed-resources: true.
PDF/LaTeX: high-resolution PNG from the bundled rasterizer, so fonts are always right without any LaTeX-side SVG tooling.