Getting Started with PreTeXt

You already know how to author in PreTeXt.Plus. It is a friendly, frictionless way to draft lessons, and for many instructors it is all they ever need. This guide is for the moment when you want more: multi-file projects, your own public URL, version history, and the same professional toolchain used by authors of full-length open textbooks. That next step is GitHub Codespaces, a browser-based development environment that runs an identical setup to what you’d eventually install locally, without actually installing anything.

You’ll work in baby steps. At each stop there’s a little check that tells you whether things are working before you move on, and a troubleshooting aside for the thing that most commonly goes sideways. By the end you’ll have an editable project, a live preview, a saved version on GitHub, and a public web page you can share.