Quickstart

Lampo is a local live-preview server for LaTeX. It watches your source files, invokes your installed LaTeX compiler, and shows the output in your browser. No accounts or cloud compilation.

Lampo is available in the public source repository for testing; the first npm release hasn’t shipped yet.

Prerequisites

• Go 1.26 or newer, for building from source during pre-release testing.
• A local TeX distribution with latexmk and pdflatex on PATH (MacTeX/TeX Live, TinyTeX or MiKTeX). XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX are optional.

Install from source

git clone https://github.com/amxv/lampo.git
cd lampo
make install-local

The installer puts the binary at ~/.local/bin/lampo. Make sure that directory is on PATH. The binary contains the entire UI, so there’s nothing else to install for the browser.

Preview your project

cd ~/path/to/your/latex-project
lampo

Lampo chooses main.tex if it exists, or automatically detects one unambiguous root document. For projects containing multiple entrypoints, provide the file explicitly:

lampo thesis.tex

The terminal prints a URL on 127.0.0.1, and the browser opens. Edit your .tex file and save it. Lampo rebuilds and replaces the preview without reloading the tab. Click Export PDF, enter your filename, and download the finished PDF.

Useful commands

lampo mydoc.tex --no-open       # Show the URL without opening a tab
lampo . --port 3030            # Stable URL for split-screen setups
lampo ./paper --engine xelatex # Use XeLaTeX

The view stays open as long as the command runs. Use Ctrl+C to stop it. The temporary TeX build directory is cleaned up automatically.

Troubleshooting

Compiler not found? Verify both latexmk and your chosen engine are on PATH (latexmk -v, pdflatex --version).

Missing .sty or language files? Your TeX distribution is missing a dependency used by your document. Install that package through TeX Live’s tlmgr or your distribution’s package manager, then save the file again.

Build failed? Click the status indicator or View log in the error banner. Lampo retains your last successful preview until a clean build finishes.

No document found? Run lampo path/to/main.tex explicitly. Lampo won’t guess when several possible document roots exist.