adf-codec/README.md

@larvit/adf-codec

Lossless conversion between Atlassian Document Format (ADF), an extended markdown flavour, and an HTML dialect.

Status: published — the markdown round-trip (adfToMarkdown, markdownToAdf); HTML at 0.2.0. Plan: todo.md. Decisions: docs/decisions.md. Changes: CHANGELOG.md. The lossless flavour's grammar: spec/flavour.md. Upgrading from 0.1.0: convert your markdown first.

What it is for

Atlassian Cloud REST APIs hand out rich text — issue descriptions, comments, pages — as ADF, a ProseMirror-shaped JSON tree, and take it back the same way. No Atlassian endpoint converts it (pf-editor-service/convert is decommissioned, JRACLOUD-77436 open), and the npm ecosystem is one-directional and lossy. A consumer that shows a document and lets someone edit it needs both directions lossless — otherwise saving destroys the panels, mentions and attachments it could not represent.

Goals

The most useful ADF conversion library available, judged by these goals, in priority order:

1. Lossless, and every call returns a result, never a throw.
2. ADF is the hub.
3. Each format reads and writes as its standard says.
4. Our markdown is CommonMark, extended only where CommonMark has no spelling.
5. No surprises: output reads and edits the way its audience expects.
6. Lossy conversion drops form, never content.
7. Runs in any JavaScript engine, with no runtime dependencies and nothing to configure or connect.
8. Fast, and linear in the document's size.
9. Easy to find, and clear at a glance what it does.

Audience

Application developers embedding the library, in four personas. All four rely on the guarantees below and on an error's code being a closed list; none may rely on an error message's wording, which is free text.

• Viewer/editor app — shows a document, lets a human edit, posts it back. Relies on the round-trip holding for whatever the site's editor wrote, unknown node types included, and on a refusal arriving before the save rather than after.
• Bot posting content — turns generated markdown into ADF. Relies on plain CommonMark being valid input, so nothing upstream has to learn a flavour.
• Export/indexing tool — converts ADF to markdown or HTML in bulk. Relies on readable output and on every refusal being deterministic, so a document that fails fails the same way next run.
• LLM/agent pipeline — hands documents to a model as markdown and writes the edits back. Relies on the round-trip and on markdown a reader half-knowing the lossless flavour can still edit.

Behind those apps, the people who read and write the markdown, and later the HTML: product managers, engineers and support agents working in Atlassian products through a plugin or another UI. They know markdown and not ADF, and rely on every spelling saying what it means to them.

The shape

npm install @larvit/adf-codec

import { markdownToAdf } from '@larvit/adf-codec'

const result = markdownToAdf('# Release notes\n\n!adf:panel info\nShipped on Tuesday.\n!adf:/panel\n')
if (result.ok) {
  send(result.value)
} else {
  const { code, message, path, position } = result.error
  console.error(`${code} at line ${position.line}, ${path.map((step) => '/' + step).join('')}: ${message}`)
}

Serves Goals 1, 2 and 7. Pure functions, each taking a whole document and returning a whole result; no I/O, no configuration. markdownToHtml and htmlToMarkdown convert through ADF: they keep only what ADF holds, and refuse what markdownToAdf or htmlToAdf refuses.

adfToMarkdown(doc: AdfDocument): Result<string>
markdownToAdf(markdown: string): Result<AdfDocument, ParseError>
isAdfDocument(v: unknown): v is AdfDocument

adfToPlainMarkdown(doc: AdfDocument): Result<string>
plainMarkdownToAdf(markdown: string): Result<AdfDocument, ParseError>

adfToHtml(doc: AdfDocument): Result<string>               // 0.2.0
htmlToAdf(html: string): Result<AdfDocument, ParseError>  // 0.2.0
markdownToHtml(markdown: string): Result<string>          // 0.2.0
htmlToMarkdown(html: string): Result<string>              // 0.2.0

Result<T> is { ok: true; value: T } | { ok: false; error: ConvertError } — nothing throws.

Plain markdown

Serves Goal 6. Plain markdown is a second flavour of the same grammar. adfToPlainMarkdown writes markdown other tools render — GitHub, GitLab, Obsidian and the like — keeping the content and dropping the rest: attributes, colours, layout, identity. Content is what a reader of the rendered document sees or follows: its text, images and link targets. It refuses only not-an-adf-document, unsupported-document-version and unsupported-nesting-depth, and writes no directive.

plainMarkdownToAdf reads what markdownToAdf reads and refuses what it refuses, and reads the conventions below as nodes, taking other tools' spellings too; a backslash keeps a marker as text: \==x==, > \[!NOTE], - \[x]. Markdown adfToPlainMarkdown wrote reads back and writes again byte for byte; the document it came from does not come back.

To edit a document and save it back, use adfToMarkdown and markdownToAdf: saving what this pair read replaces mentions, attachments and macros with text.

ADF	Written	Read back
panel	a GitHub alert, > [!WARNING]: info NOTE, note IMPORTANT, tip and success TIP, warning WARNING, error CAUTION, custom NOTE	NOTE info, IMPORTANT note, TIP tip, WARNING warning, CAUTION error, and Obsidian's: hint tip; success, check, done success; attention warning; danger, failure, fail, missing, bug, error error; any other word info — in any case; the rest of the marker's line is the first paragraph
expand, nestedExpand	Obsidian's folded callout, > [!NOTE]- Title	- or + after any word, the rest of the marker's line the title; a link reads text (target), or its text alone where the text is the target with or without mailto:; an expand inside an expand is a nestedExpand
taskList	- [x] Done, - [ ] Todo	a bullet list whose every item is so marked, [X] too
backgroundColor	==text==	==text== on one line, the text touching both delimiters, bounded outside by whitespace, punctuation or a line edge, or touching a Han, Hangul, Hiragana, Katakana, Thai, Lao, Khmer or Myanmar character on either side, in the editor's default highlight #f8e6a0
table	a pipe table: the first row its header, a cell's blocks on one line, a span kept under its header by empty cells	—
decisionList	a bullet list	—
mention, status, emoji, date	their text: @ kept, a mention with none @ and its id, an emoji its shortName without, a date 2026-09-13 in UTC	—
inlineCard, blockCard, embedCard	a link to the card's URL, else its name	—
external media	 in a block, [alt](url) inline	—
stored media, mediaInline, extension, inlineExtension	their alt or text	—
layoutSection, bodiedExtension, bodiedSyncBlock, multiBodiedExtension, extensionFrame, caption, a node this version does not know	its blocks or its text	—
placeholder	nothing	—

• Content the document only references, with no text of its own to keep, leaves an italic note naming it where it stood: _(image not included)_ for stored media with no alt, _(link card not included)_ for a card with neither URL nor name, an extension with no text its key, _(jira-issues-table not included)_, or _(extension not included)_ without one, and _(synced block not included)_ for a syncBlock.
• backgroundColor, code, em, link, strike and strong stay; every other mark drops, keeping its text, and so does a mark the flavour cannot spell where it stands.
• A newline in text is a hard break and in an expand's title a space, edge whitespace outside a link or code span is trimmed, carriage returns and null characters are removed, and an empty paragraph drops.
• An ordered list numbered past 999999999, or adjacent ordered lists whose numbering does not continue, is one bullet list keeping its numbers as text.
• A task list beside a bullet or decision list, or holding a block other than a task, joins one bullet list keeping its states as text: - \[x] Done.
• Text that would read as a marker takes a backslash: == wherever it could open or close a highlight, [!…] opening a quote, and [x] or [ ] opening any list item, since GitHub reads that marker per item.
• A node read back carries no localId except a taskList, taskItem or blockTaskItem, which Atlassian's schema requires one on: each gets a UUID v4 hashed from the whole markdown and its position, the same on every read. Join markdown bound for one document and read it once: the same markdown read twice into one document repeats its ids.

The errors

Serves Goal 1. An ADF node type this version does not know is not an error: the lossless pair carries it opaquely and restores it unchanged (docs/decisions.md).

ConvertError is { code, message, path, position? }. code is the exported ConvertErrorCode, stable across minors and safe to switch on exhaustively with no default; message is free text and may change in any release. A parse always names a position, so markdownToAdf returns ParseError and its position reads without a guard; an emit reads no source and carries path alone; one handler typed on ConvertError takes both, which is what the composed markdownToHtml and htmlToMarkdown hand back. path is the node's place from the document root, alternating 'content' and an index, so path.map((step) => '/' + step).join('') is a JSON Pointer at the node — the empty path being the document itself.

A call reports the first refusal in document order and stops, so a document with several surfaces them one per call. Every refusal is deterministic — there is no I/O anywhere — so a retry returns the identical error: fix the input, or set the document aside.

position is { line, offset } into the string passed in: line counted from 1, offset a UTF-16 code unit, a JavaScript string index rather than a codepoint or a byte offset. It points at or before the refusal — currently the start of the line the enclosing block begins on; a later minor may narrow that, never widen it.

Parsing — markdownToAdf and plainMarkdownToAdf, and htmlToAdf at 0.2.0:

Code	Fires when	What you can do
malformed-directive	an !adf: the grammar cannot read — a prefix completing no directive, an unclosed container, [content] or {attrs}, a closer with no container of its name open, a leaf given a body, {attrs} out of order or duplicated, invalid JSON in an opaque carry	write the spelling the message names, or keep it literal: escape the prefix — \!adf:, block and inline alike — or, for a code fence whose info string opens adf:, drop the info string and wrap the fence in !adf:codeBlock {language="adf:…"}
malformed-pipe-table	a pipe row that is no pipe table — a missing or ragged --- delimiter row, an alignment colon in it, or a row not opening with a pipe	open every row with a pipe and give the delimiter row the header's cell count; to keep the lines literal text instead, escape the leading pipe of every one — escaping a single row leaves the next to open a fresh table and fail the same way
unknown-directive-name	a directive whose name is no node or mark this version spells	check the name in spec/flavour.md, or escape the prefix as \!adf:; the spelling itself is well formed, so a later minor may give the name meaning
unmappable-html	the input holds an HTML construct the documented element set does not map, a comment and a processing instruction among them — at this version that is every raw HTML construct in markdown, the element set landing at 0.2.0	remove the construct, or write what it holds in the lossless flavour
unmappable-image	an image sits inside other content that is not another image's description, or carries a title	give the image a paragraph of its own and drop the title

Emitting — adfToMarkdown, and adfToHtml at 0.2.0:

Code	Fires when	What you can do
not-an-adf-document	the value handed in is no ADF document — a missing or wrong type, a stray key, a node that is not a node	guard the boundary you receive JSON at with isAdfDocument; the message names the branch that refused
unsupported-document-version	the document's version is not 1	keep the ADF and pass the document over, or show it read-only; the version is the site's, not yours to change

Either direction. The emitter's own refusals are in this group — a parse reaches them by asking it which CommonMark spelling a node takes — so the two rows above are not the measure of how often an emit refuses:

Code	Fires when	What you can do
unspellable-character	text or a code block holds a carriage return or a null character, which CommonMark rewrites wherever it sits	strip or replace the character; no escape carries it through the round-trip
unspellable-line-start	a paragraph line begins with a code span whose backticks would read back as a code fence	put any text before the code span
unspellable-whitespace	an emoji, mention or status holds a newline in the text its inline directive spells in the content slot	replace it with a space — an inline directive never spans lines
unsupported-nesting-depth	blocks, marks, an attribute's JSON or a carried node's JSON nest past 500 levels	keep the ADF and pass the document over, or show it read-only; flatten the input where you are the one who wrote it
unsupported-node-shape	a node carries an attribute, value, argument or body its type does not take, or lacks one it needs — or markdown writes as a directive a node or mark the lossless flavour spells as CommonMark, or a reserved directive stands out of place: !adf:textBreak{} or !adf:listBreak parting nothing, !adf:doc anywhere but as the whole document	fix what the message names; spec/flavour.md lists every type's attributes and body

The guarantees

Serves Goals 1, 3 and 4.

• markdownToAdf(adfToMarkdown(doc)) deep-equals doc as JSON, for a document of plain objects as JSON.parse builds them — every key and value as doc holds it, adjacent text nodes, an empty attrs, content or marks and -0 included, and unknown node types carried opaquely (docs/decisions.md).
• Markdown this library reads, and markdown it writes, means what the CommonMark spec says; from 0.2.0, well-formed HTML means what the HTML standard says, read or written. The bullets below name every exception.
• Plain CommonMark is valid input to markdownToAdf apart from the raw HTML unmappable-html names, with four carve-outs — literal text matching directive, pipe-table or strikethrough syntax, and a code fence whose info string opens adf:, are claimed (each can be kept literal — spec/flavour.md) — and one gap: a CommonMark image fits only as its own title-less paragraph; mid-text and titled images are error results, save an image inside another's description, which flattens into the alt text. Converting back yields the library's canonical spelling, which round-trips byte-identically — where it converts back at all: a parse succeeding is no promise of that, so keep the source until the way back succeeds. ` `` ` reads cleanly and then refuses.
• Four CommonMark spellings parse without an error and build a document the reference implementation renders differently: [](/url) and []() stay literal text against CommonMark's empty link, a list continuing past a marker change stays one list against CommonMark's two, a shortcut reference matching its definition only under Unicode case folding stays unresolved, and a link whose text holds an autolink keeps the inner link and leaves the outer brackets literal text, which the spec requires and the reference itself breaks, nesting one <a> in the other. The first three are pinned pending in corpus/commonmark-spec/exceptions.json; the suite holds no example of the fourth.
• Not every document converts back: adfToMarkdown is partial on valid ADF — a text node holding a carriage return, or a paragraph line beginning with a code span whose backticks read back as a fence. Show the refusal and keep the document read-only; saving markdown you could not produce is the loss the round-trip exists to stop.
• The pipe table narrows GFM's twice: every row opens with a pipe, so GFM's bare form is an error result rather than the prose it reads as, and an alignment colon in the delimiter row is an error too — ADF holds no column alignment. The trailing pipe is canonical output, optional in input.
• Past that and ~~, no GFM: an autolink literal and a - [ ] marker stay text, and a checklist is the taskList directive — plainMarkdownToAdf turns the marker into a taskList.
• A document nested deeper than 500 levels is an error result, not a stack overflow, and no input makes a call loop forever.
• The emitted formats are semver surface (docs/decisions.md).
• 0.2.0 — htmlToAdf(adfToHtml(doc)) deep-equals doc; fidelity HTML cannot express rides data-* attributes. Foreign HTML maps a documented element set, which markdown's raw HTML reads through as well, and a construct outside it is an error; well-formed HTML only — no tag-soup recovery.

The package

Serves Goal 7. ESM only, no runtime dependencies, public npm. Built JavaScript with .d.ts beside it. Pure ECMAScript at an ES2022 baseline, reaching for no host API; the test suite runs under Node, Deno and Bun, and a headless Firefox converts the corpus through the built entrypoint. Contract: docs/decisions.md, §Any ES2022 engine to §Public on npm.