panschema

A universal CLI for schema conversion, documentation, validation, and comparison.

Status: Active Development

Vision

panschema aims to be the universal tool for data modeling workflows:

• Convert between schema languages (LinkML, OWL/TTL, JSON Schema, SHACL, SQL DDL)
• Generate documentation from any supported format
• Validate schemas and check compatibility
• Compare schemas and track changes

Think of it as pandoc for data modeling — a single tool that speaks all schema languages.

Current Features (v0.2.0)

• OWL/Turtle input → HTML documentation
• LinkML IR as canonical internal representation
• Fast: Generate complete documentation in milliseconds
• CI-native: Single binary, no JVM or complex dependencies
• Hot reload: Development server with live preview

Installation

cargo install panschema

Or download pre-built binaries from GitHub Releases.

Quick Start

Generate documentation from an OWL ontology:

panschema generate --input ontology.ttl --output docs/

Start a development server with hot reload:

panschema serve --input ontology.ttl

Open http://localhost:3000 to view the documentation.

Supported Formats

Input Formats

Output Formats

Architecture

panschema uses a Reader/Writer architecture with LinkML as the internal representation:

Input File → Reader → LinkML IR → Writer → Output
   (TTL)    (OwlReader)  (SchemaDefinition)  (HtmlWriter)  (HTML)

This design enables:

• Adding new input formats by implementing the Reader trait
• Adding new output formats by implementing the Writer trait
• Format-agnostic documentation and conversion

Why panschema?

Read our WHY.md to understand the full vision.

TL;DR: Data modeling is fragmented across many schema languages. panschema provides a unified interface — fast, CI-native, and extensible.

Development

Prerequisites

• Rust 1.85+ (edition 2024)
• cargo-nextest (recommended for testing)
• Node.js 20+ and Playwright browsers (for E2E tests)

# Install Playwright browsers
npx playwright@1.56.1 install

Building & Testing

cargo build
cargo nextest run --features dev

Manual Verification

panschema serve --input tests/fixtures/reference.ttl

UI Component Style Guide

cargo watch -w src -w templates -x 'run --features dev -- styleguide --serve'

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please follow our standards:

• TDD First: Write tests before implementation
• Strict Linting: Pass cargo fmt and cargo clippy
• Pre-commit: Use our pre-commit hooks

License

Apache-2.0