STXT came to me in the spring of 2013: a language that preserves the most used features of XML, while being able to be written by non-technical people. The first version was created, different from the current one, but I never announced it. In 2014 my daughter was born; my priorities changed.

Time passed and we arrived at 2025. In those years I didn't find another format with the same balance of characteristics that STXT has, and I decided that was the time to resume the project. Since then, I've been revising the language, using it for personal projects, and today it's usable and stable.

STXT is a text format for documents and structured data, indentation-based, with schemas, namespaces, and no escape characters.

An example in STXT (extra indentation for HN):

  Book (com.example.library):
      Title: Modern Software Architecture
      Authors:
          Author: Keyla Brown
          Author: Joan Costa
      ISBN: 978-84-123456-7-4
      Published: 2026-08-25
      Summary >>
          This book offers a practical view
          of patterns and best practices
          for designing distributed,
          scalable systems.

And the template with the structure and cardinality:

  Template (@stxt.template): com.example.library
      Structure >>
          Book:
              Title: (1)
              Authors: (1)
                  Author: (+)
              ISBN: (1)
              Published: (1) DATE
              Summary: (?) TEXT

The portal is made with STXT itself (add .stxt to any URL to see the source). There you can find the language specifications and implementations in Java, TypeScript and Python, passing the same conformance kit. All available at https://github.com/stxt-lang/ under MIT License.

You can try STXT at https://play.stxt.dev or install the VS Code extension stxt-lang.stxt.

Show HN: STXT, a human-first XML alternative I created in 2013, is now ready