Quick Start

This walks you from an empty project to translated, exported strings. It assumes you’ve done Installation.

1. Start the UI

From your project root:

glotfile

Your browser opens the Editor. If there’s no glotfile.json yet, Glotfile uses defaults and writes the file on your first edit.

2. Add your languages

Open Settings and set:

• Source locale — the language you author in (e.g. en).
• Locales — every language you want to maintain (e.g. en, fr, de).

See Keys and Locales for how locales work.

3. Add keys and source copy

In the Editor, add a key in dot notation and type its source string:

The source value is saved with the state source.

4. AI-translate the rest

Info: One-time setup — AI translation needs an API key in your environment. The default provider is Anthropic — set ANTHROPIC_API_KEY (a local .env file works). See AI Providers for OpenAI and AWS Bedrock.

Fill the empty languages — from the Editor’s translate action, or the CLI:

glotfile translate

New translations are written as machine state. Glotfile never overwrites a value you’ve marked reviewed. See How Translation Works.

5. Review

Back in the Editor, filter to machine to see unreviewed translations. Promote the good ones to reviewed; flag the rest. See Review States.

6. Export to your app’s formats

Configure where files go in Settings (or Output Formats), then:

glotfile export

This writes the locale files for every configured output (Flutter ARB, Laravel PHP, i18next JSON, and more — see Output Formats).

7. Commit

Commit glotfile.json together with your code. The diff is the review:

git add glotfile.json lib/l10n/
git commit -m "Add sign-in copy + translations"

Because the catalog is just a file in your repo, branching, pull-request review, and rollback work exactly the way they already do for code.

Where to go next

• Translation Workflow — the same loop, in depth
• Continuous Integration — keep translations healthy in CI
• The State File — what’s actually in glotfile.json