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Introduction

Werb is a file-driven homebrewing tool. Recipes in, brew sessions out — every artifact is plain JSON you can read, version, share, and round-trip with every other tool that speaks the format.

It runs three ways from the same codebase:

  • A desktop app (Tauri) on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
  • A Progressive Web App in any modern browser (including iPad Safari).
  • A command-line tool, werb, for batch conversion and validation.

Why “file-driven”?

Most brewing apps lock recipes inside a proprietary cloud. Werb takes the opposite stance:

  • Your recipes are plain BeerJSON 2.x files on your disk.
  • Brew sessions are plain JSON files next to them.
  • Every calculation has a JSON Schema you can audit.
  • Sync to GitHub is opt-in and explicit — one repo, one Personal Access Token, one click per push or pull.

If Werb disappears tomorrow, your data is still BeerJSON — readable in every other brewing tool.

What’s in this guide

  • Installation — download the desktop app, open the PWA, or install the CLI.
  • The CLI — werb convert and werb validate. Use it to bulk-import historical recipes, or to schema-check a folder before pushing.
  • Sync to a GitHub repo — point Werb at a repo and let it write per-recipe .beerjson files into a folder you choose.
  • Architecture — for contributors and the curious.
  • BeerJSON schema notes — what Werb supports, what it deliberately doesn’t, and where the two diverge from upstream.