The Debug format outputs Stencila documents using Rust's Debug trait formatting. This produces a verbose, structured representation that shows the exact types, enum variants, and field values of every node in the document tree.

This format is primarily useful for debugging and development — for example, to inspect which specific enum variants are present in a document or to verify that a codec is producing the expected internal representation.

Use the .debug file extension, or the --to debug option, when converting to the Debug format e.g.

By default, the output is pretty-printed with indentation. Use the --compact option for single-line output:

Debug encoding is implemented in the Rust crate codec-debug. It uses Rust's built-in Debug trait ({:#?} for pretty-printing, {:?} for compact output).