The Files tab

Everything you have ever uploaded for a game is on the Studio’s Files tab: the rulebook, the art the build read, every card cut out of a sheet, every page pulled from a print & play PDF, and anything you have added since. It is the only place in the Studio that lists them all, and the only one that accepts a PDF, cuts a sheet, or imports a PDF’s pages. (The Layout Editor’s sheet mode also takes a folder of images in one drop, and every art slot in the editor can still upload — or pick — a single image on its own. The rulebook and your storefront photos have their own controls on Details.)

Before a game is built you work in the uploader, and that screen goes away the moment the build finishes. Files is what takes over from it. The two do different jobs: the uploader sorts your material into buckets so a build can read it, while Files is a plain library — it adds, replaces, retypes and deletes files and never touches your table.

Nothing here binds artwork. Adding a file does not create a component or point an existing one at it; a new file just sits in the library until you choose it in the Layout tab. Two places there do that, and both browse this same library:

• Choose on any art slot in the inspector — a component’s front or back, a die face, a deck’s shared back, a zone’s or the table’s surface — for one image at a time;
• the Front art / Back art columns in sheet mode, for a whole game’s worth in one pass. Those add an Unused chip that narrows the picker to the art nothing points at yet — handy straight after a bulk add.

Replacing is the exception, and the next section is why.

Adding and replacing are different things

This is the distinction worth holding on to, because the file list looks the same either way:

• Adding puts a new file in the library. Nothing on the table changes until you bind it to a component yourself.
• Replacing swaps the picture inside a file you already have, and the file keeps its identity — so every component already using it shows the new art at once, with no re-binding and no layout edit.

Replacing is what you want when you have redrawn art you already shipped. Adding is what you want when there is something new on the table.

taybl decides which you meant from the filename, and it asks before a single byte is uploaded. Drop files on Add files (or click it to browse) and:

• if none of their names match a file you already have, they are simply added;
• if any name does match, a dialog opens and asks you file by file.

That dialog names what each existing file is currently used by — Used by Wizard, rather than just card12.png — because "replace the front of Wizard?" is a question you can answer and "replace card12.png?" is not. Every row gets three answers, and Apply to all sets them in one go:

If two of your files already share a name — which happens once you have cut more than one sheet — taybl will not guess. It shows you each candidate with what it is used by, and Replace stays disabled until you say which one you meant.

A replace occasionally changes something besides the pixels, and taybl says so afterwards:

• A card cut from a sheet loses its link back to that sheet, so the sheet no longer counts it as one of its cuts.
• A print & play PDF that had already been imported has that record cleared — which is exactly what lets you import its pages again. See re-importing a revised PDF below.

The same drop — the same filename matching, the same three answers — runs in the Layout Editor’s sheet mode, where you can drag a whole folder over the grid and bind it in the art columns without leaving the editor. Two things stay here: that grid takes images only, so a PDF has to come in through this tab, and it never offers to cut anything — an uncut sheet dropped there is added as one file. The slicer and the page importer are this tab’s.

The file list

One row per file — a thumbnail, its name, the stored filename beneath it, and, where a component uses it as a front, a back, or a deck’s shared back, an In use by a component marker.

That marker reads component faces and deck backs, the same things the picker’s Unused chip treats as bound. It does not see a zone’s or the table’s own surface art, so read it as a helpful flag rather than a guarantee: its presence means something is definitely using the file, its absence does not prove nothing is.

Each row carries:

Deleting art that is on the table is safe. It disappears from the table straight away, and the next time you Save in the Layout Editor taybl clears the reference that was left behind and tells you what it cleared — you never end up with a game you cannot save.

One difference from cutting during a build: Cut up… here never uses AI. taybl reads the cut lines off the image itself, for free, and when it cannot, you type the rows and columns — the work it out for you closer look, which is a model call, is not offered in this tab. Nothing you cut here is sent to an AI provider. Expect to type the grid fairly often: the free pass finds cards by looking for uninterrupted background between them, and a great deal of print & play art butts its cards together with no gap at all. See Cutting sheets without AI.

Deleting several files at once

Tick the box on each file you want gone, or use the Select all box in the bar above the list to take the lot. The bar counts what you have picked and gives you Clear to start over.

Delete N files then asks once, and the question names the cost: if any of the files you picked are being used by a component, it tells you how many. Those components keep their place on the table and lose their artwork — the same trade the single-file confirm describes.

The whole selection goes to taybl in one go rather than one file at a time. That matters if you are clearing out a big print & play import: taybl limits how many changes you can make in a short window, and deleting a hundred files one click at a time used to run into that limit part-way through, leaving the job half done. Ticking them and deleting once does not.

Naming a file

Click a row’s name to rename it. This is the name the component built from that file will carry — what you see in the component picker, and what search the deck matches when a player looks for a card by name.

It matters most after a print & play import. A PDF called file.pdf becomes pages called file-2-uncut.webp, which the slicer cuts into file-2-uncut-01.webp and so on — and a component called File 2 Uncut 01 tells nobody anything. Giving these real names is also how the generator connects your art to your rules: it matches the names you use here against the components your rulebook describes, so a file called Chance lands as the Chance deck the rules talk about.

Names do not have to be unique, but two files sharing one is worth avoiding — nothing downstream can tell them apart. Clearing a name is safe: the row falls back to a name worked out from the filename.

Renaming never changes the stored filename shown beneath, which is what taybl matches on when you drop replacement artwork in. Rename freely; your re-uploads keep working.

You can also name components in two other places: per block in the slicer as you cut a sheet, and per file at the confirm-your-components step during a build.

Saying what a file is

The Type dropdown offers the same list as the confirm-your-components step: Board, Piece, Card (front), Card (back), Token, Dice, Sheet of cards (uncut), Rules document, Setup photo, Gameplay photo, Background, Icon, Other.

Files you add here arrive with a neutral type — images as Other, PDFs as Rules document — because this tab has no idea what a picture is of. Correct the ones where it matters and leave the rest; the type is a label on the file, not on the component that ends up using it.

One thing the type does not decide is which file players open when they ask for the rules. That answer is ranked, and a file you named as the rulebook — in the uploader before the build, or by uploading one on the Details tab — beats anything merely typed Rules document here. To change which file players get, replace it from the Rulebook card on Details; see PDFs full of components.

You can type an image as Rules document — a photo or scan of a rulebook page is a perfectly good thing to hand a player, and the AI can work from one as well: with no text to pull out, taybl reads the pages as pictures. Typing it Rules document is what makes that happen — an image left as art is treated as art.

One option is an instruction rather than a description. Choosing Sheet of cards (uncut) means this page holds many components — cut it up, and it opens the slicer on the spot. Everything the slicer does is described under slicing a sheet of cards — it is the same dialog the build flows use, down to the Not a sheet button. Once a file is typed as an uncut sheet, Cut up… re-opens the slicer on it — including a sheet you have already cut, where it offers to replace the pieces that cut produced. See cutting a sheet again.

Importing pages from a PDF

Import pages… on a PDF row opens the print & play page importer, described in full under PDFs full of components. Drop a PDF on Add files and, if it looks like it holds components rather than only prose, that importer opens by itself.

It behaves exactly as it does before a build: it reads the file’s own page labels where there are any, falls back to thumbnails you pick from where there are not, and importing never cuts — a page holding many components arrives as an uncut sheet and waits for you in the slicer.

Re-importing a revised PDF

A PDF can only be imported once while the pages it produced still exist, which is the right rule until the day you revise the file. The way through is to replace the PDF and import it again:

1. Drop the revised PDF here under the same name and choose Replace. The file keeps its identity, and taybl clears its record of the earlier import — it says so — so the file can be imported again.
2. Press Import pages… and pick the pages as before.
3. The dialog now offers “Replace the N pages I imported before”, already ticked. Leave it ticked and each freshly rendered page swaps into the row its previous version occupied, so a component bound to page 3 shows the revised page 3 with nothing to re-bind. Untick it to keep both editions side by side as separate files, which you then bind yourself.

The offer only appears when there is genuinely something to replace, so a first import never shows it. It works because a page is named after the PDF it came out of, so a second import produces exactly the names the first one did.

Two pages step out of that swap and are added as new files instead, rather than the import failing:

• A page you have already cut into cards. Those cards were measured against the old image, so replacing it underneath them would make every cut a lie.
• A page whose name already matches more than one file. taybl will not pick one of them for you.

Limits

Files added here count against the same allowances as anything uploaded during a build — per file, per game, and per designer. See Limits. If you hit the per-game ceiling, delete what the game no longer uses from this list and try again.

Related

• Uploading assets — the uploader, the slicer, and the print & play importer
• Studio tour — where the Files tab sits
• Layout overview — where art is bound to a component
• Sheet mode — replacing a folder of art in one drag
• Components — what a face image belongs to
• Refining and regenerating