Project Structure

A Tonto project is a folder with a tonto.json manifest and one or more .tonto source files.

university-model/
  tonto.json
  src/
    main.tonto
    people.tonto
    university.tonto
  out/
    university-model.json
    gufo.ttl
  tonto_dependencies/
    shared-types/

Manifest

The manifest file is always named tonto.json.

{
  "projectName": "university-model",
  "displayName": "University Model",
  "publisher": "example",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "license": "MIT",
  "dependencies": {},
  "outFolder": "out",
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Example Modeler",
      "email": "modeler@example.com"
    }
  ]
}

Field	Purpose
`projectName`	Stable project identifier and default generated artifact name.
`displayName`	Human-readable project name.
`publisher`	Organization or person responsible for the package.
`version`	Project version, also useful when publishing Git tags for dependencies.
`license`	License string.
`dependencies`	Git-based dependency map used by TPM.
`outFolder`	Output directory used by generators.
`authors`	Optional author metadata.

Source files

Each .tonto file contains statements: imports and package declarations. The recommended convention is one package per file:

import core.datatypes
import core.people as people

package university.academic

kind University
role Student specializes people.Person

Source files can live anywhere under the project folder. Generated folders and dependency folders should not be treated as source.

Output folders

Generators use outFolder unless a command-specific destination is provided:

tonto-cli generate . --destination generated-json
tonto-cli plantuml . --destination generated-diagrams

Keep generated outputs out of source review unless your project intentionally tracks published artifacts.

Dependencies

TPM installs dependencies into tonto_dependencies.

{
  "dependencies": {
    "CoreTypes": {
      "url": "https://github.com/example/tonto-core-types.git",
      "version": "1.2.0",
      "directory": "packages/core-types"
    }
  }
}

Do not commit tonto_dependencies. The repository root .gitignore already ignores dependency directories.

Diagram specs

.tontodiagram files store diagram authoring preferences for the alpha diagram editor:

diagram "University overview" {
  import university.academic
  include University, Department, Student

  direction LR
  stereotypes true
  attributes true
  external false
  datatypes true
}

Diagram specs reference the model; they do not replace .tonto source files.