Generate vs Emit

Generate vs Emit

Topogram uses two verbs for two different jobs.

Status: current Audience: developers and agents choosing command verbs Use when: you need to know whether to write app outputs or inspect contracts/reports.

Topogram uses two verbs for two different jobs.

Generate

generate writes app or runtime output.

topogram generate
topogram generate ./topo --out ./app
topogram generate app ./topo --out ./app

Default input is ./topo. Default output is ./app.

Use this when you want generator packages to write web, API, database, or native runtime files.

Emit

emit prints or writes named artifacts.

topogram emit ui-widget-contract ./topo --json
topogram emit widget-conformance-report ./topo --projection proj_web_surface --json
topogram emit db-schema-snapshot ./topo --projection proj_db --json
topogram emit sql-migration ./topo --projection proj_db --from-snapshot ./state/current.json

emit prints to stdout by default. It writes files only with --write:

topogram emit ui-widget-contract ./topo --write --out-dir ./contracts

Use this for contracts, reports, snapshots, migration plans, and agent packets.