Getting Started

You can write and run NX without installing anything, then call it from your own application through a published package, using only the package manager you already have.

1) Try it in the playground

Open the playground, pick an example, and edit it. It compiles as you type, in your browser, and reports errors against your source.

Here is a small NX program to paste in. It declares a record type, a component that takes one, and ends with the element that is the program’s result:

type User = { name:string }

let <Greeting user:User /> =
  <p>Hello, {user.name}!</p>

<Greeting user=<User name="Ada" /> />

It evaluates to a p element whose content is "Hello, ", "Ada" and "!".

2) Editor support

The NX extension for VS Code highlights NX files, reports errors as you type, and adds hover and completion. Install NX Language (Official) from the Visual Studio Marketplace or, for VSCodium, Cursor and other editors built on VS Code, Open VSX. You can also search for nx-lang.nx-language in the Extensions view, or run:

code --install-extension nx-lang.nx-language

It runs on Linux x64, macOS arm64 and Windows x64, and opens any .nx file.

3) Use NX from .NET

The NxLang.Sdk package compiles and evaluates NX from any .NET 10 application, on Linux x64, macOS arm64 and Windows x64:

dotnet add package NxLang.Sdk

using System.Text.Json;
using NxLang.Nx;

string source = """
    type User = { name:string }
    let <Greeting user:User /> = <p>Hello, {user.name}!</p>
    <Greeting user=<User name="Ada" /> />
    """;

JsonElement value = NxRuntime.EvaluateJson(source);
Console.WriteLine(value); // {"$type":"p","content":["Hello, ","Ada","!"]}

NxRuntime.Evaluate<T> deserializes the result into your own type instead, and NxProgramArtifact builds a program once to evaluate it many times.

4) Use NX from JavaScript

In a browser or under Node, @nx-lang/sdk-wasm compiles NX to NX IR, and @nx-lang/ir-runtime evaluates that IR:

npm install @nx-lang/sdk-wasm @nx-lang/ir-runtime

import { createNxHost, loadNxModule } from "@nx-lang/sdk-wasm";
import { evaluateFunction, prepareNxIrProgram } from "@nx-lang/ir-runtime";

const host = createNxHost(await loadNxModule());
const artifact = host.buildProgramArtifact(`
  type User = { name:string }
  let <Greeting user:User /> = <p>Hello, {user.name}!</p>
  <Greeting user=<User name="Ada" /> />
`);
const [{ bytes }] = artifact.generateNxIr();
artifact.dispose();

const program = prepareNxIrProgram(bytes);
console.log(evaluateFunction(program, "root"));
// { $type: "p", content: ["Hello, ", "Ada", "!"] }

loadNxModule reads the compiler from disk under Node. In a browser, compile it from its URL with compileNxModule(fetch(url)). An application that only runs NX it compiled ahead of time ships the IR bytes and needs only @nx-lang/ir-runtime.

5) Next steps

• The Language Tour walks through elements, functions, expressions and types.
• Building Your First Component builds something a little larger.
• The Reference gives the exact rules when you need them.

To build NX from source, use the nxlang command-line tool, or work on NX itself, see Contributing.