decompile

Convert a TeaLeaf binary file (.tlbx) back to the human-readable text format (.tl).

Usage

tealeaf decompile <input.tlbx> -o <output.tl> [--compact] [--compact-floats]

Arguments

Argument	Required	Description
`<input.tlbx>`	Yes	Path to the TeaLeaf binary file
`-o <output.tl>`	Yes	Path for the output text file
`--compact`	No	Remove insignificant whitespace for token-efficient output
`--compact-floats`	No	Strip `.0` from whole-number floats (e.g., `42.0` → `42`). Re-parsing will produce Int instead of Float for these values

Description

The decompile command:

Opens the binary file and reads the header
Loads the string table and schema table
Reads the section index
Decompresses sections as needed
Reconstructs @struct definitions from the schema table
Writes each section as a key-value pair in text format

Notes

Comments are not preserved – comments from the original .tl are stripped during compilation
Formatting may differ – the decompiled output uses the default formatting, which may differ from the original source
Data is lossless – all values, schemas, and structure are preserved
Bytes are lossless – bytes values are written as b"..." hex literals, which round-trip correctly

The --compact flag removes insignificant whitespace from the output: no spaces after : in key-value pairs, no spaces after , in arrays and objects, no indentation, and no blank lines between sections. This produces a token-efficient format ideal for LLM context windows.

tealeaf decompile data.tlbx -o data_compact.tl --compact

The compact output is semantically identical to the pretty-printed output and round-trips without data loss.

Compact Floats

The --compact-floats flag strips .0 from whole-number floats for additional character savings. This is useful for financial datasets where values like 35934000000.0 become 35934000000.

# Maximum token savings: compact whitespace + compact floats
tealeaf decompile data.tlbx -o data.tl --compact --compact-floats

Trade-off: Re-parsing the output will produce Int instead of Float for whole-number values. See Round-Trip Fidelity for details.

Examples

# Decompile a binary file
tealeaf decompile data.tlbx -o data_recovered.tl

# Decompile with compact output (fewer tokens for LLM input)
tealeaf decompile data.tlbx -o data_compact.tl --compact

# Maximum token savings (compact whitespace + compact floats)
tealeaf decompile data.tlbx -o data_max.tl --compact --compact-floats

# Round-trip verification
tealeaf compile original.tl -o compiled.tlbx
tealeaf decompile compiled.tlbx -o roundtrip.tl
tealeaf compile roundtrip.tl -o roundtrip.tlbx
# compiled.tlbx and roundtrip.tlbx should be equivalent

TeaLeaf Documentation