Math Renderer for Paseo

Render block and inline LaTeX inside assistant reply bodies. Block formulas get one muted English action row: Show LaTeX and Copy LaTeX. Inline formulas sit in the text; tap one to see its source. No extra panel or duplicate message toolbar.

Experimental beta — 0.1.0-beta.6. Requires Paseo app and daemon 0.9.0-beta.1 or newer. Checked offline against Paseo 0.9.2 and 0.10.0-beta.1; the checks also pass with the 0.11.4 SDK. Beta.5 was tested live on a 0.12.0-beta.2 daemon in the hosted web client; the beta.6 npm package was loaded on a 0.12.0-beta.3 daemon. Replies stay native while streaming; supported formulas render after completion. Native iOS/Android acceptance and complete native Markdown parity are not finished. Read the limitations before enabling this trusted plugin.

Synthetic React Native Web component preview, not a native mobile or live Paseo screenshot. Light preview · Compact preview

Install

Plugins run as trusted, unsandboxed code. Review the source, choose the target daemon, and enable plugins in Paseo before installing. On Paseo 0.11 or later, install the reviewed registry entry geoqiao/math-renderer:

paseo plugin add geoqiao/math-renderer --host <host:port>
paseo --host <host:port> plugin ls

To install the published npm package directly:

paseo plugin add npm:paseo-math-renderer@0.1.0-beta.6 --host <host:port>

Paseo installs the package's runtime dependencies (MathJax and resvg) from its npm-shrinkwrap.json. The package already contains the generated Markdown parser and embedded WASM, so its manifest has no build steps. The paseo-plugin.json in the Git source keeps them: they install the development dependencies, generate those files and typecheck.

To install the pinned prerelease directly from Git instead:

paseo plugin add git:geoqiao/paseo-stuff:plugins/math-renderer --ref math-renderer-v0.1.0-beta.6 --host <host:port>

Paseo 0.11 reads a bare owner/name source as a registry ID, so the git: prefix is required there. Paseo CLIs before 0.11 take the same Git source without the prefix.

The manifest ID is math-renderer. This directory is independently installable; it does not import any sibling plugin or depend on root-installed packages. For local development, run the checks below, then install this directory or reload the existing runtime ID.

Beta.6 is published on npm. Beta.5 adds inline math. Beta.4 removes the <0.10.0 upper bound so Paseo 0.10 prereleases can load the plugin, and tests against Paseo 0.9.2 host sources. Beta.3 added 0.9 whole-message handling, host external-link opening and a native-reply mode for chat Find. Beta.2 fixed mobile bundle loading and added bold Greek symbols. See verification details for the reproduced Hermes error and the scope of the fix.

If you used the earlier local prototype alias paseo-math-renderer-prototype, keep that installation's ID for reload/disable. Do not enable a second copy alongside it. Likewise, avoid overlapping assistant-message replacement plugins.

Supported content

• Closed display-math blocks: $$...$$ and \[...\], with delimiters occupying their own lines or the entire block on one line.
• Closed fenced math blocks, including one redundant outer display-delimiter pair.
• Inline math: \(...\) and $...$ inside paragraphs, headings, lists and quotes. A $ formula needs no space just inside either delimiter and no digit right after the closing $, so costs $5 and $10 stays text. Write \(...\) when the formula must start or end with a space. $$...$$ or \[...\] in the middle of a paragraph and unclosed delimiters keep their source.
• Tap an inline formula to see its LaTeX source, and tap the source to switch back.
• Paragraphs, headings, emphasis, lists, quotes, ordinary code, and HTTP(S) Markdown links.
• Streaming replies use Paseo's native Markdown renderer. Supported formulas are typeset when the whole reply completes, avoiding repeated full-document parsing and mid-stream fallback when an image, file link or size limit appears later.
• Invalid or unsupported TeX retains its source; transport/render failures offer Retry.
• Show LaTeX changes to Show formula while viewing source. Manual viewing survives text and theme updates while the card remains mounted.
• Long equations scroll horizontally. Colors follow the host theme; compact actions have 44-pixel minimum height.

Example prompt for a model:

Explain the quadratic formula in English. Mix normal Markdown paragraphs, a list and
a quotation with display formulas. Put display delimiters on their own lines. Include
a Gaussian integral, a matrix in a math fence, and an aligned three-line derivation.
Include a Python code block with the string "$$not_math$$". End with a valid formula
after a deliberately invalid \badUnknownCommand{1} display formula. Do not use tools
or wrap the entire reply in a code fence.

Limitations

• Most recent reply after a page reload: in the 0.11.4 web client, the last reply of a reloaded agent stays native until the agent's next turn. Earlier replies render. The plugin cannot detect this case. The 0.12.0-beta.3 web client renders that reply (getpaseo/paseo#7322).
• Inline formulas are images, so a long formula does not wrap across lines. Punctuation after a formula is joined to it with an invisible U+2060 word joiner, which appears in copied text.
• Text such as $x$5 (a digit right after the closing $) is not math; amounts written as $5$ are typeset as the formula 5.
• The Paseo plugin SDK (0.9.0-beta.1 through 0.10.0-beta.1) does not expose the native Markdown renderer or math-node extensions. The plugin replaces supported source rows with its own small Markdown renderer; code highlighting, workspace-file interactions and native selection behavior are not fully reproduced.
• Tables, images, explicit HTML, non-HTTP(S) links, more than 64 formulas (block and inline) or more than 96,000 characters cause the entire completed source reply to remain native.
• Chat Find: in the 0.12.0-beta.3 web client, Find matches and highlights text in rendered replies, but not formula source such as mc^2. Paseo 0.9.0-beta.1 through 0.11.4 cannot reliably jump to a match in a rendered reply. To search formula source, or on those versions, choose Math: use native replies for chat Find in the Command Center before Cmd/Ctrl+F. Choose Math: render block formulas afterwards. These actions affect this client's selected host, restore native rows without changing history, and reset to formula rendering when the plugin/client reloads. Other clients are unaffected.
• Local formula viewing state does not survive every virtualization unmount.
• MathJax base + AMS + boldsymbol only. \boldsymbol{\mu} and other bold math symbols are supported. Missing glyphs (including many non-Latin text glyphs), external resources, custom macros and unsupported commands fall back to source.
• Host foreground colors currently must be six-digit hex strings. Font size is clamped to 12–28 and image density to 1–3; other accessibility configurations need testing.
• PNG output has a LaTeX accessibility label and copy action, but is not semantic MathML and does not provide continuous mathematical text selection.
• Historical macOS Paseo 0.8.0 checks used actual model output. Native iOS/Android, other app/daemon versions, full desktop reconnect/disable cycles and sustained multi-client performance are not accepted as tested.
• The transformer only selects assistant messages and does not change tool display settings. Summary/Full detail behavior has pinned-source integration tests, not a complete live-App matrix of both modes and other plugins.

Rendering and trust

Formula text goes through the existing Paseo plugin RPC to MathJax on the daemon machine. MathJax produces self-contained SVG glyph paths; bundled resvg WASM rasterizes them into PNG data URIs. The client renders ordinary React Native images, text and scroll views.

No external math service, font URL, system-font scan, runtime filesystem access, shell process or extra HTTP listener is used by the renderer. This is not a promise that Paseo's trusted plugin environment is a security sandbox.

Limits include 96,000 characters / 64 formulas per complete source reply, 4,096 characters per formula, bounded TeX commands/nesting/rows, 2,400×800 logical pixels / 4 million raster pixels, 1 MB SVG/PNG, 128 cache entries / 8 MB of image URIs, and at most 16 pending renders. These are not a hard CPU timeout or a strict memory sandbox. Use trusted inputs; adversarial/high-concurrency load remains a beta risk.

Cleanup unregisters contributions, clears the cache and releases MathJax resources. The host terminates the plugin subprocess to reclaim its WASM memory. MathJax 3 is deliberately pinned for self-contained, synchronous glyph output; migration to MathJax 4 is a separate maintenance task.

Development

From this directory:

npm ci --ignore-scripts --legacy-peer-deps --no-audit --no-fund
npm run prepare:markdown
npm run prepare:wasm
npm run check

prepare:markdown lowers the pinned Markdown parser to function-based JavaScript and wraps it as ESM in ignored shared/generated/ for Hermes compatibility. prepare:wasm embeds the unmodified npm resvg WASM artifact into ignored server/generated/wasm.ts. The Git manifest runs both build steps during installation; npm pack runs them too and ships the generated files in the npm package. Do not commit generated files, dependencies or compiled bundles.

Typecheck before reloading the exact installed ID on the intended host. Do not restart the daemon or auto-enable a disabled installation.

Verification

The 0.9 migration adds real pinned host presentation/identity/Find-model tests and bundle lifecycle checks for both native-reply actions. Beta.4 pins those host sources to Paseo v0.9.2 (identical in v0.10.0-beta.1) and passes the checks with the 0.9.2 and 0.10.0-beta.1 SDK packages, and with the 0.11.2 packages. Historical evidence follows; see verification details for current checks and limits.

• Typecheck, lint and 57 automated tests passed locally, including the complete client bundle evaluated in the RN 0.81.5 Hermes executable. Host UI/hooks and RPC contracts are stubbed in that engine test; on-device rendering remains unverified.
• Tests include real MathJax/resvg PNG output, malformed/oversized inputs, stable source-row identity using pinned Paseo 0.8.0 source, cleanup, and synthetic mixed-output regressions.
• Two real model replies contained 12 display formulas: 11 valid and one intentionally invalid. Their 18 recorded deltas reconstructed history exactly; backend replay produced 11 images and retained the invalid source. Selected rendering and failure cases were inspected in the App.
• Nine separate browser interaction groups passed using actual plugin components and the real local renderer, including exact LaTeX copy, English/muted single-row actions, source state, light/dark themes, 390px overflow, streaming completion and simulated transport failure. These browser checks are not native mobile acceptance.
• Publication-time production dependency audit reported zero known advisories; this is a point-in-time result, not a security guarantee.

See verification details and the repository's CI results.

License

Plugin-authored code is MIT. Third-party code, glyphs, WASM and pinned host fixtures retain their licenses. See THIRD_PARTY.md, third-party/, and the fixture LICENSE.