Typst for University Notes

“Your assignments look so beautiful — do you spend hours making them?”
My professor once asked me this with genuine curiosity.

The truth? Not really. I just take my rough class notes, clean them up a bit, and turn them into polished PDFs — all in far less time than most of my classmates.

Why I moved from Markdown to Typst

In my first two semesters, I relied on Markdown and Obsidian to take notes, Git to version them, and GitHub to back them up. I exported them as PDFs when needed. It worked — but it always felt like a patchwork solution.

Then I discovered Typst — a modern typesetting system built for simplicity and power. The moment I tried it, I knew this was the upgrade I needed. Typst gives me beautiful PDFs, powerful macros, and math support — all without the friction I had with Markdown.

Here’s a screenshot of a CSIT assignment I did using Typst:

Typst Assignment

My Workflow: Typst + Git + Neovim

Here’s how I’ve set up my note-taking flow now:

A dedicated Git repo for notes on Github.
Neovim as my editor with tinymist for Typst LSP.
A flake / nix-direnv for all dependencies.

Now, you’d be asking, why this complex setup??

I use NixOS and macOS, so flakes work everywhere.
I love git push/pull workflow.
I can use Neovim as the editor.

My `flake.nix` setup

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
  };

  outputs = { nixpkgs, ... }:
    let
      systems = [ "x86_64-linux" "aarch64-linux" "x86_64-darwin" "aarch64-darwin" ];
      forAllSystems = f: nixpkgs.lib.genAttrs systems (system: f (import nixpkgs { inherit system; }));
    in {
      devShells = forAllSystems (pkgs: {
        default = pkgs.mkShell {
          packages = with pkgs; [
            typst         # Typesetting
            tinymist      # LSP for Typst
            python3       # Python runtime
            basedpyright  # Python LSP
            ruff          # Formatter
            uv            # Python package manager
          ];

          env.LD_LIBRARY_PATH = pkgs.lib.makeLibraryPath [
            pkgs.libz
            pkgs.stdenv.cc.cc.lib
          ];
        };
      });
    };
}

Neovim Configuration

I use lazy.nvim plugin manager which allows having a seprate .lazy.lua file for setting up plugins specific to the project directory.

Here’s my .lazy.lua spec for the lazy.nvim plugin manager which sets the lsp for python and typst with a couple of keybind for the specific project only.

return {
  {
    "neovim/nvim-lspconfig",
    name = "lspconfig",
    event = { "BufReadPost", "BufNewFile" },
  },

  vim.lsp.enable({ 'basedpyright', 'tinymist' }),

  vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("filetype", {
    pattern = "python",
    callback = function()
      vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>lf", function()
        vim.cmd("silent! !ruff format %") -- Format current file
        vim.cmd("edit!")                  -- Reload file after formatting
      end, { desc = "Format Python file with ruff" })
    end,
  }),
}

With this, I get inline errors, autocompletion, signature help, and quick formatting — exactly what I want. Here’s how it feels in action:

typst-nvim

Final Thoughts

At this point, Typst feels like the real OG. A couple of years ago, my older brothers introduced me to LaTeX — and I thought that was the gold standard. But after showing them Typst, even they’ve made the switch.

I’m still keeping an eye on the HTML support pull request, which would make it even easier to integrate Typst on many places like even website itself.. But even now, it’s already changed how I work.