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Skillsquarto-doc-setup

quarto-doc-setup

Writing & research

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Updated 10-15 17:25

About this skill

Quarto Document Project Setup

This skill sets up professional documentation projects that render Markdown to PDF using Quarto and custom LaTeX templates.

Workflow

Follow these steps in order when setting up a new Quarto document project.

Step 1: Check Prerequisites

Run these checks and report results to the user:

# Check Quarto
quarto --version

# Check TeX Live
pdflatex --version
Check required LaTeX packages

for pkg in libertinus.sty fontspec.sty multirow.sty mdframed.sty zref.sty needspace.sty titlesec.sty enumitem.sty; do kpsewhich "$pkg" > /dev/null 2>&1 && echo "OK: $pkg" || echo "MISSING: $pkg" done

Check JetBrains Mono font (system font, not a TeX package)

fc-list "JetBrains Mono" | head -1 || echo "MISSING: JetBrains Mono font"


If Quarto is missing, tell the user to install it from https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/

If the JetBrains Mono font is missing, install it:
```bash
brew install --cask font-jetbrains-mono

If TeX packages are missing, provide this command:

sudo tlmgr install libertinus libertinus-fonts libertinus-otf libertine fontspec multirow mdframed zref needspace titlesec enumitem

Step 2: Choose a Template

Present the user with these template options using AskUserQuestion:

  1. Corporate Report — Professional business documents with logo support, navy blue accents, clean tables. Good for: annual reports, proposals, policy documents.

  2. Technical Manual — Optimized for technical content with styled code blocks, admonition boxes (note/warning/tip), dark teal accents. Good for: API docs, technical specs, runbooks, SOPs.

  3. Assessment Report — Color-coded status indicators, metadata boxes, summary tables, blue accents. Good for: compliance assessments, audits, gap analyses, security reviews.

  4. Minimal Clean — No title page, black/gray only, wide margins, elegant typography. Good for: memos, short reports, internal documents, drafts.

Step 3: Gather Document Metadata

Ask the user for:

  • Title (required)
  • Subtitle (optional)
  • Author (optional)
  • Date (optional, e.g., "March 2026")
  • Organization (optional)
  • Document status (e.g., "Draft", "Final", "Under Review")
  • Language (optional, e.g., "norsk" for Norwegian — adds babel support)
  • Logo file path (optional, for corporate-report template)
  • Version (optional, for technical-manual template)

Step 4: Create Project Files

The templates are located in this skill's templates/ directory. Resolve the skill path by finding where this SKILL.md file lives (check ~/.claude/skills/skill-quarto-doc-setup/ for the symlink, or the original repo path). Copy the selected template and create the QMD file.

4a. Copy the LaTeX template to the user's project directory:

cp ~/.claude/skills/skill-quarto-doc-setup/templates/<selected-template>.tex <project-dir>/<template-name>.tex

4b. Create the QMD document with this frontmatter structure:

---
title: "<title>"
subtitle: "<subtitle>"
author: "<author>"
date: "<date>"
organization: "<organization>"
document_status: "<status>"
short_title: "<abbreviated title for headers>"
lang: "<language>"  # optional, e.g., "norsk" — omit for English
titlepage: true
toc: true
format:
  pdf:
    template: <template-name>.tex
    number-sections: true
    keep-tex: false
---

# First Section

Your content here.

For the minimal-clean template, omit titlepage: true (it uses an inline title instead).

For the technical-manual template, add version: "<version>" to show a version number on the title page.

4c. Add to .gitignore (if a git repo):

# Generated PDF output
*.pdf

Step 5: Render and Verify

quarto render "<document-name>.qmd" --to pdf

Open the generated PDF and confirm it renders correctly. If there are LaTeX errors, check for missing packages first.

Template Details

Shared Features (All Templates)

  • KOMA-Script scrartcl document class (A4 paper, 11pt)
  • Libertinus serif + JetBrains Mono monospace fonts (via fontspec/LuaLaTeX)
  • 2.5cm margins on all sides (3cm for minimal-clean)
  • Zero paragraph indent with 8pt paragraph spacing
  • Styled hyperlinks matching accent color with PDF metadata
  • Full Pandoc/Quarto compatibility (\tightlist, Shaded, Highlighting, \pandocbounded, syntax highlighting tokens)
  • $for(include-before)$ / $for(include-after)$ content injection
  • Section numbering responds to number-sections frontmatter
  • Table of contents with configurable title and depth
  • Professional booktabs-style tables with left-aligned longtables
  • Customizable headers/footers with document status
  • Styled inline code with background highlight
  • Optional language support via babel
  • Optional line spacing control

Frontmatter Variables

All templates support these QMD YAML variables:

Variable Used In Description
title All Document title
subtitle All except minimal Subtitle below title
author All Author name
date All Date shown on title page
organization All except minimal Organization name on title page
document_status All Shown in footer (e.g., "Draft")
short_title All Abbreviated title for page headers
lang All Language for babel (e.g., "norsk", "german")
logo corporate-report Path to logo image for title page
titlepage All except minimal Set true to generate a separate title page
toc All Set true for table of contents
toc-title All Custom table of contents heading
toc-depth All TOC depth (default: 3)
linestretch All Line spacing multiplier (e.g., 1.5)
version technical-manual Version number on title page
framework assessment-report Assessment framework name
total_requirements assessment-report Number of requirements assessed
assessment_date assessment-report Date of assessment

Template-Specific Commands

Assessment Report provides these LaTeX commands for use in QMD with raw LaTeX blocks:

  • \statusfully — Green "Fully met" badge
  • \statuspartially — Orange "Partially met" badge
  • \statusnotmet — Red "Not met" badge
  • \assessmentsummary{fully}{partial}{not} — Summary count table
  • \requirementmeta{title}{asset}{function}{description} — Requirement metadata box

Technical Manual provides:

  • \notebox{text} — Blue info box
  • \warningbox{text} — Orange warning box
  • \tipbox{text} — Green tip box

Troubleshooting

Common issues and fixes:

  1. "Undefined control sequence" for \pandocbounded — You are using an older version of the templates. Re-copy the template from this skill's directory.

  2. Missing LaTeX packages — Run kpsewhich <package>.sty to check. Install with sudo tlmgr install <package>.

  3. Section numbers not toggling — Ensure number-sections: true/false is under format: pdf:, not at the top level.

  4. Non-English characters broken — Add lang: "<language>" to frontmatter (e.g., lang: "norsk" for Norwegian). The templates load babel conditionally.

  5. Overfull hbox warnings — The templates set \emergencystretch{3em} to handle most cases. For persistent issues, try rewording long unbreakable strings.

  6. Images too large — The \pandocbounded macro auto-scales images to fit. Use Quarto's width attribute for manual control: ![Caption](image.png){width=80%}.

Customization

To add custom LaTeX to the preamble without editing the template, use header-includes in frontmatter:

format:
  pdf:
    template: corporate-report.tex
    include-in-header:
      text: |
        \usepackage{soul}
        \definecolor{mycolor}{RGB}{100, 150, 200}

Example QMD

An example document is available at examples/example-document.qmd in this skill's directory. Use it as a reference for frontmatter and content structure.