The directory that holds your Typst source is called the project directory, and you can compile it like so:

rheo compile path/to/projectdirectory

In general, there are two ways to configure Rheo:

1. By passing flags directly to the CLI command.
2. By specifying configuration in a rheo.toml file at the root of the project directory.

If you compile a Rheo project directory without a rheo.toml file, the following default settings will be applied to compile your project.

version = "0.4.0"
content_dir = "./"
build_dir = "build"
formats = ["pdf", "html", "epub"]

[epub.spine]
title = "[project directory name]"

Without a spine config, every Typst file under content_dir is included, ordered by the directory-scan default.

To point Rheo to a rheo.toml file that is not at the root of the project directory, specify it directly via the CLI:

rheo compile path/to/project --config path/to/config

Per-page footnotes

In HTML and EPUB output, Rheo produces one output file per page. By default it resets the footnote counter to 1 at the start of every page, so each page numbers its footnotes independently. To let footnotes accumulate continuously across the whole bundle instead, set reset_footnotes = false under [html] or [epub]:

[html]
reset_footnotes = false   # let footnotes accumulate across pages (default: true)

The key is per-format: set it on [html] and [epub] independently. It defaults to true, and as with other settings the CLI takes precedence over rheo.toml, which takes precedence over the default (there is no CLI flag for it). PDF is unaffected — it combines your project into a single document, so its footnotes are always continuous regardless of this key.

Automatic package detection

Rheo scans your content files’ #import statements and auto-detects assets or marrow declared by any @rheo-aware package you use, per format. Set auto_detect_packages = false on a format’s own table to turn that off for that format alone:

[html]
auto_detect_packages = false   # default: true

See Packages for more information.

Fonts

Because Rheo embeds its own copy of the Typst compiler, it resolves fonts itself rather than deferring to any typst binary or font cache already on your system. Alongside your system fonts, it looks for a fonts directory at the root of your project by default and loads anything it finds there. Set the top-level font_dirs key to search different or additional directories instead — paths are resolved relative to the project root unless absolute, and setting this key switches off the automatic fonts autoscan, so include "fonts" explicitly if you still want it searched:

font_dirs = ["fonts", "custom/typefaces"]

The repeatable --font-dir CLI flag, available on compile and watch, appends further directories on top of whatever font_dirs (or the autoscan) already resolved.