Introduction

thermal-label is an organization of open-source TypeScript packages for talking to consumer and small-business thermal label hardware. The goal is simple: give application developers a stable, typed surface (PrinterAdapter, PrinterDiscovery, Transport) and move every vendor-specific byte sequence into replaceable driver packages.

Why another printing stack?

Vendor tools are often GUI-first, poorly versioned, or tied to a single runtime. Here everything is packages on npm, CI-tested, and split so you can depend on only what you ship:

• A headless server can take @thermal-label/*-node plus UsbTransport / TcpTransport.
• A React or Vue app in Chromium can take -web packages with WebUsbTransport or WebBluetoothTransport (and LabelManager’s WebHID path) without pulling Node native modules into the bundle.
• A support engineer can install thermal-label-cli plus the relevant driver package and reproduce a customer issue from the shell.

Design values

Types at the boundary. @thermal-label/contracts is intentionally types and interfaces only — zero runtime beyond a type re-export from @mbtech-nl/bitmap so bitmap payloads are consistent across design tools and drivers.

One transport story. @thermal-label/transport implements the Transport interface four ways (USB, TCP, WebUSB, Web Bluetooth). Drivers do not re-implement framing; they write to a Transport and parse replies.

Discover, then open. PrinterDiscovery lists DiscoveredPrinter entries; openPrinter() applies filters (family, serial, transport). discoverAll() aggregates multiple drivers without one failure blocking another.

Honest scope. The shared CLI is for hardware validation and quick prints. Rich label composition lives in burnmark — the READMEs draw that line on purpose so expectations stay clear.

Where to read next

• Architecture for package boundaries and import paths.
• Drivers for device-specific notes (Node ≥24, secure contexts, Linux udev).
• Integrating for embedding checklists.

Trademarks (DYMO, Brother, …) belong to their owners; these projects are not affiliated with manufacturers.