Build your content

Your content starts as one vertical auto-layout frame. Its direct children are the blocks, in reading order. That is the whole contract.

The source frame

Create a frame, set vertical auto layout, give it the width of your template’s content area.
Add your content as its children: headings, paragraphs, cards, tables, figures, component instances, groups.
Order it the way it should read, top to bottom.

A source frame with headings, paragraphs, a two-column frame and a table — Only direct children count. The two columns are one block; the text inside them is not.

What makes a good block

A paragraph is a text layer with a fixed width and auto height. That is the default for text inside an auto layout set to Fill.
A card, a figure or a table is a frame. It moves whole unless you tag it as splittable.
Two or three columns are one horizontal auto-layout frame. Pagestream never breaks inside it.
Component instances work like frames. A signed-off chart stays a chart.

Width

Blocks set to Fill keep filling the content width of the page. Fixed-width blocks keep their width and sit at the left. Mixed widths are fine; the page just needs to be at least as wide as the widest block.

Layer names carry the rules

Pagestream reads two things from a block’s layer name, and nothing else.

Name	Effect
`H1 Title, H2 Section, Heading`	Keep with next: the block never ends a page. It moves with the block after it.
`Any name with [keep]`	The same, for a block whose name does not look like a heading.
`Any name with [split]`	May break between its children. For tables and long lists. A first child named "Header" is repeated.

Pull quotes, callouts and figures

Make them frames with a vertical auto layout and they behave like any other block. A pull quote is a frame with a tinted fill, a left rule and two text layers. Drop it between two paragraphs in the source frame, or later into any page.

Importing text

Paste from a document into one text layer, then split it into paragraphs with Figma’s own tools, or keep it as one long text block: Pagestream splits a long paragraph at a line boundary when it has to. Markdown and Google Docs import are on the roadmap.