Command line

The vexy-dexypy command is built with Python Fire. It has five commands. You can also run it as python -m vexy_dexypy.

vexy-dexypy build URL [flags]
vexy-dexypy read URL [flags]
vexy-dexypy analyze URL [flags]
vexy-dexypy render SLUG STRATEGY [flags]
vexy-dexypy split PDF [flags]

Show the help for any command with --help, for example vexy-dexypy build --help.

Tip

Fire accepts flag names with underscores (--no_cache) or hyphens (--no-cache). If Fire mistakes a flag value for a positional argument, put the flags after a -- separator.

build

Runs the whole pipeline: read, analyze, normalize, prepare, render and write, for every selected strategy.

Flag	Default	Meaning
URL	(required)	http(s):// URL or local HTML file path
--out	out	Output root folder
--aspect	none (720p)	Stage profile: 720p, 1080p or 810p
--size	none	Stage size as WxH, for example 1600x900; overrides --aspect
--strategies	all	Comma-separated strategy names, or all
--svg	False	Also convert each slide PDF to SVG
--vision	False	Refine slide breaks with a local vision model
--verbose	False	Log at DEBUG level instead of INFO
--no_cache	False	Ignore cached engine PDFs and render again
--browser_engine	none (playwright)	playwright, playwrightauthor or cloakbrowser
--fetch_mode	none (live)	live, localize or offline

Flags left unset fall back to the configuration file, then to the built-in default. See Configuration.

Fetch modes

live

The default. Opens the URL in the browser, captures the rendered DOM, and adds a <base href> that points at the page's own address. Fonts, CSS and images keep loading from the network. If Playwright is not installed, the run falls back to localize.

localize

Fetches the HTML with httpx and downloads every <link>, <script>, <img> and <source> asset into raw/assets/, including url() and @import targets inside stylesheets. If the fetched body has fewer than 500 characters of text, the static reader treats the page as client-rendered and re-reads it in headless Chromium.

offline

Runs an external archiver (single-file by default, or monolith) to produce one self-contained HTML file. If the archiver is not on PATH, the run falls back to localize.

Local files always use the static reader, whatever the fetch mode.

Browser engines

playwright

Standard Playwright Chromium. The default.

playwrightauthor

Imports playwrightauthor from private/playwrightauthor/src (relative to the current folder) for persistent browser sessions.

cloakbrowser

Uses the cloakbrowser package to launch a headless browser.

The browser engine applies to the live reader and to the in-browser vexy-dexyjs preprocessing. The exporters always launch Playwright Chromium.

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	At least one strategy succeeded
1	Usage error, for example an unknown strategy or a malformed --size
2	No strategy succeeded, no strategy ran, or another vexy-dexypy error stopped the run

read

Runs stage 1 only. It fetches the page, classifies it, writes _meta/page.json, and prints the path of the captured HTML.

Flags: --out, --verbose, --browser_engine, --fetch_mode.

vexy-dexypy read https://www.vexy.art/lines/

analyze

Runs stages 1 and 2. It writes _meta/page.json and _meta/slideplan.json, then prints the slide count and the break offsets in pixels.

Flags: --out, --aspect, --size, --vision, --verbose, --browser_engine, --fetch_mode.

vexy-dexypy analyze https://www.vexy.art/lines/ --aspect 1080p

render

Runs stages 4 to 6 for one strategy, using the sidecars of an earlier run. It reads _meta/page.json and _meta/slideplan.json, and uses normalized/normalized.html when that file exists.

Argument or flag	Default	Meaning
SLUG	(required)	The folder name under --out, for example www-vexy-art-lines
STRATEGY	(required)	One strategy name
--out	out	Output root folder
--svg	False	Also write SVG files
--verbose	False	Debug logging

vexy-dexypy render www-vexy-art-lines playwright --svg

split

Runs stage 6 only on any PDF. It writes 01-slide.pdf, 02-slide.pdf, … and an index.html preview into --out.

Argument or flag	Default	Meaning
PDF	(required)	Multi-page PDF to split
--out	.	Output folder
--svg	False	Also write SVG files
--prefix	slide	File name part after the number
--verbose	False	Debug logging

vexy-dexypy split deck.pdf --out slides --prefix page

This writes slides/01-page.pdf, slides/02-page.pdf, and so on.

How the slug is made

The output folder name comes from the URL or path. The tool lowercases it, removes a leading http:// or https://, replaces each run of characters other than a–z and 0–9 with -, trims leading and trailing -, and keeps at most 80 characters.

Input	Slug
https://www.vexy.art/lines/	www-vexy-art-lines
https://blog.fontlab.com/	blog-fontlab-com