Will it be possible to create multiple PDF outputs from a single call to typst?

Bryn · November 8, 2025, 9:29pm

In the recent blog post on automated generation of PDF there is a description of how a single typst file can take inputs from another source (e.g., an external json file) and be compiled to a single output based on the contents of the json file.

What I would like eventually is to be able to generate multiple output files from a single input file, for instance, rather than passing in a single customer’s details (as in the blog post), perhaps you could pass in the details for many customers and have typst generate a series of output PDFs like account_001.pdf, account_002.pdf, etc. (and maybe even the output file name could be described in the typst file or with command line options somehow).

I currently do this type of task using quarto and R, and I can imagine from the blog post how I could do it using shell scripts, but for various lightweight tasks it would be nice if it could be handled within a single call to the typst compiler itself.

Is this something that others have thought about and/or rejected as a possible future step in automated PDF generation?

Andrew · November 8, 2025, 10:18pm

See Allow using page number template for PDF to produce multiple PDF files · Issue #7342 · typst/typst · GitHub.

Philipp · November 8, 2025, 10:28pm

I had the very same thought reading the blog post, especially as this is something where typsts incremental compilation can shine, and opened a feature request here:

github.com/typst/typst

Batch input compilation

opened 04:41PM - 07 Nov 25 UTC

eltos

feature request cli

### Description **Implement a batch mode to incrementally compile a single typs…t file against multiple sets of input parameters, producing multiple output files in a single run.** This mode would allow using the full power of incremental compilation to generate many similar documents in a batch process, where only a small part of the document (controlled by `sys.inputs`) changes. It's somewhat similar to the `watch` command, just that a new file is created for each change of the inputs. Note that this is different from #2738 where batch compilation of many different typst files is requested. **Proposal for the API (to be discussed):** Using a new `--inputs` parameter (as opposed to the existing `--input`) ```bash typst compile --inputs data.toml greet.typ greet-{b}.pdf ``` with `data.toml` ```toml [pete] name = "Peter" points = 100 [maddy] name = "Madeleine" points = 1044 ``` and `greet.typ` ```typ Hi #sys.inputs.name, you have #sys.inputs.points Points! ``` would - first compile `main.typ` with `sys.inputs == (name: "Peter", points: 100)` to produce `greet-pete.pdf` - then incrementally with `sys.inputs == (name: "Madeleine", points: 1044)` produce `greet-maddy.pdf`. As a bonus, the toml format would allow more datatypes than only string. The batch template parameter `{b}` in the output would be required similar to the `{p}` required for multi-page svg export (except if there is only one record in the toml file, in which case also the output file name and the section name in the toml file can be omitted). ### Use Case [Automated PDF Generation](https://typst.app/blog/2025/automated-generation) of many similar documents where only small parts such as names or numbers are different. This mode would optimize batch processing time by using incremental compilation rather than calling `typst compile` for each record in a loop, thus avoiding the startup overhead and recompilation of common contents.

Bryn · November 9, 2025, 12:14am

I hadn’t even considered the incremental compilation advantages but that could make it possible to compile (say) 1000 versions of a document in far less than 1000x a single compilation.

I’m assuming it could also be possible to parallelise aspects of the process too if the typst compiler knew that the documents are independent of one another (although possibly then it becomes harder to use the incremental compilation tricks).