@designless/annotate

@designless/annotate

Build-time source markers so Designless can route a rendered element back to its exact source line.

When you edit a rendered element on the Designless canvas, the edit needs to find its way home: to the (file, line) that produced it. This package stamps that provenance onto your host elements during development, as plain data attributes. That is all it does.

What it stamps

On each intrinsic host element (div, h1, button, custom elements), in development only:

<h1 data-source-file="src/page.tsx" data-source-line="12" data-selectable data-designless="annotate/v1">

• data-source-file: repo-relative path (never absolute, never ..)
• data-source-line: the element's source line
• data-selectable: marks it selectable on the canvas (your own data-selectable is left untouched)
• data-designless: the marker contract version

Components are skipped. Already-marked elements are skipped. That is the whole contract, and it is frozen at annotate/v1.

Two guarantees

• Production is untouched. Markers are stamped in development only. Your production build is byte-for-byte what it would be without this package.
• It cannot break your build. A marker it cannot produce is simply not produced. No code path here stops next dev or vite from starting.

Install

The one-liner does it for you:

npm create designless@latest -- next   # or: vite, svelte, vue, astro, qwik

Or wire it yourself.

Next.js (next.config.js), using the bundled SWC plugin (works under Turbopack):

const { withDesignless } = require('@designless/annotate/next')
module.exports = withDesignless({ /* your config */ })

Tested on Next 15.5, Next 16.1 through 16.3, and the Next 16.4 canary. Next builds its SWC plugin support against a specific compiler ABI, and that ABI changes between releases, so the package ships one build per ABI and picks the right one for your Next at startup. If a future Next ships an ABI none of them match, markers switch off for that run and your app and build are untouched. Updating this package brings them back.

Vite + React (vite.config.js):

import react from '@vitejs/plugin-react'
export default { plugins: [react({ babel: { plugins: ['@designless/annotate/babel'] } })] }

Svelte / SvelteKit (svelte.config.js):

import designlessAnnotate from '@designless/annotate/svelte'
export default { preprocess: [designlessAnnotate()] }

Vue (vite.config.js):

import vue from '@vitejs/plugin-vue'
import designlessVue from '@designless/annotate/vue'
export default { plugins: [designlessVue(), vue()] }

Astro (astro.config.mjs):

import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config'
import designlessAstro from '@designless/annotate/astro'
export default defineConfig({ integrations: [designlessAstro()] })

Qwik (vite.config.ts):

import { qwikVite } from '@builder.io/qwik/optimizer'
import designlessQwik from '@designless/annotate/qwik'
export default { plugins: [designlessQwik(), qwikVite()] }

Each engine reads the same frozen marker contract, so a stamped <div> looks identical no matter which framework produced it.

Scope

Development only. No network calls on any build path, no configuration, no change to production output. The package adds the marker attributes described above and nothing else.

License

Apache-2.0. Copyright 2026 Designless Private Limited. designless.io