Install & run

Parlance is a local desktop application. It runs on your machine, reads and writes your project's files directly, and needs no account, no server, and no internet connection.

Get the app

Grab a build from Download — macOS (Apple Silicon), Windows (x64), or Linux (AppImage or .deb). On macOS, drag Parlance to Applications.

First launch. Current builds are unsigned, so each desktop platform warns once. On macOS you may see "Parlance is damaged and can't be opened." It isn't damaged — that's the standard unsigned-app warning. Clear the quarantine flag once per download:

xattr -cr /Applications/Parlance.app

On Windows, SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC" — click More info → Run anyway.

Linux

.deb (Debian, Ubuntu): sudo apt install ./parlance-desktop_*.deb. On Ubuntu 23.10 and later the package installs a small AppArmor profile so Chromium's sandbox can start; nothing else is needed.

AppImage: chmod +x Parlance-*.AppImage and run it. Two things can stop it on Ubuntu:

• On Ubuntu 23.10 and later an AppImage cannot use the sandbox (AppArmor blocks it, and an AppImage cannot carry a profile). If it exits at once with "The SUID sandbox helper binary was found, but is not configured correctly", start it with --no-sandbox, or use the .deb instead.
• The AppImage needs FUSE 2, which Ubuntu 22.04 and later no longer install by default. If it fails with "dlopen(): error loading libfuse.so.2", run sudo apt install libfuse2 (libfuse2t64 on 24.04).

Open a project

Launch Parlance and point it at a project folder. A project is just a directory containing your narrative files — most often the data/ directory inside your game's own repository, so your story is versioned alongside the game that reads it.

• New to it? Use File ▸ New Project… and pick the First conversation template: a tiny working project with one character and a branching dialogue. Blank gives you the empty layout instead. (parlance init my-story --template first-conversation does the same from the command line.)
• Want to see a finished project? The demo mystery, The Mistfall Inn, ships with the app. Choose File ▸ Open the Demo (or Open the demo on the welcome screen): the first time, Parlance copies it to Documents/Parlance/The Mistfall Inn and opens the copy, which is yours to edit. Later, the same command reopens that copy with your changes — it never overwrites it. To start fresh, delete or rename the folder and choose it again. (On Linux, the copy goes to your XDG Documents folder, or your home folder if none is set.) You can also play it in your browser.
• Existing project? Use File ▸ Open Project… and pick the project root. If it has a data/ directory, a parlance.config.json or a schema/ directory, Parlance recognizes it. Any other folder is refused with "Not a Parlance project": Parlance never scaffolds a folder you open. Create a project with New Project… or parlance init instead.

Where your files live

Everything is human-readable JSON in your repo — no database, no library folder, nothing hidden in Application Support:

your-game/
  data/          the narrative — what your game reads
  tests/         route fixtures — regression tests
  lore/          Markdown canon docs
  review/        review threads (invisible to the runtime)
  parlance.config.json   optional

Full details, including how to relocate any of those directories, are in the configuration reference. Nothing outside your project folder is written except a few view preferences (panel widths, node density), which live in the app's local storage and never in your repo.

Command line

The same validator the app runs is available headless for CI, in the separate npm package @orbitope/parlance-cli (parlance ci-check, parlance route and more). The desktop app doesn't install a parlance command. See the CLI reference and the CI tutorial.

When something's wrong

Working from source

If you have access to the Parlance repository, the editor also runs from a source checkout as a local host plus web client — that path is documented in the repository itself, not here. Everything else in these docs applies identically either way: same editor, same validator, same files on disk.