Getting started

Welcome. This guide walks you from an empty window to a project with a scene you've written, a character in your lore, and — if you want it — AI switched on. Ten minutes, start to finish. You don't need to read it all at once; each section stands alone.

A few things worth knowing up front:

• Your work is just files. Every scene is a Markdown file, every lore entry another, plus a handful of small YAML files for structure. You can read, back up, and version-control the whole project without this app.
• AI is off until you turn it on, and even then it only ever sees context you authored. Skip the AI section entirely if you'd rather write unassisted.
• Nothing phones home. There's no account and no sync — the app is two local processes talking to each other on your own machine.

Create your first project

When the app opens with nothing loaded, you'll see a short line pointing you at the project switcher — the button in the top-right corner. Click it and choose New project… to open the New Project wizard.

The very first time, the wizard opens on a Welcome step with two choices: Create a new project (continue below) or Open an existing project, which lets you pick a project folder you already have; you then confirm the projects folder that contains it (a sensible one is suggested) and it opens.

The wizard has a few steps; you can go Back at any point:

1. Projects folder — the first time only, pick the one folder that will be your library: the single home under which all your projects live. You set this once. (It's also the boundary for inheritance later, so projects in the same library can share world-building; for now, just choose where your writing should live.)
2. Location — despite the name, this is where you name and place this project. Enter a Project name, then confirm the Location — the folder for this one project, normally created inside your Projects folder (use Browse… to put it elsewhere). Note that these are two different things: the Projects folder is your whole library; the Location is the single project inside it. The wizard spells out the final path under "Will be created at:". Under Inherit from, a brand-new project will usually say "Nothing to inherit from here — this project stands alone." That's exactly right for your first book; inheritance is for later, when you build a series or a shared universe.
3. AI — leave this Off for now (you can turn it on any time). We'll come back to it below.
4. Review and Describe — glance over the defaults, add an optional description, and click Create.

To reopen a project later, use the same switcher: pick a Recent row, or choose Open folder….

Find your way around

Two controls drive the whole app:

• The ≡ menu (top-left) opens everything: your Project settings, Detail Types, Prompts, Chats, Assistants, Plot tools, Mutations, Settings…, and — under Help — these Guides.
• The project switcher (top-right) opens, creates, and switches projects.

The main working area is a set of panes you can drag, resize, and tile however you like. Three are always available: Draft (your manuscript), Lore, and Research. Others open from the ≡ menu when you need them.

Write your first scene

Your manuscript lives in the Draft pane, under a Scenes heading. A fresh project starts empty ("No scenes yet.").

1. Click the + button at the top of the pane. A small menu (Add at root) lists what you can add here — Act and Scene at the top. Add an Act, then use the + on that row (Add child) to add a Chapter, and a Scene under that. Act and Chapter are the project's levels: Levels, next to the +, renames them or adds a deeper one (a Sequence under each chapter, say), and sets whether chapter numbers restart in each act or run on.
2. Click the scene to open it. The body is a normal what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor — just start typing.
3. Type / anywhere to open the command menu: headings and paragraphs under Structure, lists and quotes under Formatting, and Scene break, Table, and Mutate lore under Insert.

Alongside the prose, a Details panel shows the scene's fields — things like Summary, Status, and POV. Which fields appear depends on your project's schema, which you're free to shape (see Custom fields, below).

Add a character (or any lore)

Lore is where your world lives — characters, places, factions, objects, and anything else worth remembering. Each item is an Entry.

1. In the Lore pane, click + (Add entry).
2. The New entry menu lists the types your project defines (Character, Location, and so on). Pick one — it opens a new entry with a title, a Markdown body, and fields for tags and references.
3. Write who or what it is. Lore entries link to each other and are what the AI draws on when you ask it about your story.

Tip: if AI is on, the Brainstorm new… option can draft an entry with you instead of starting from a blank page.

Shape your own fields

The Summary / Status / POV fields on scenes are just a starting point. You can add your own fields and even your own node types — a POV character reference on scenes, a danger level on locations, whatever your book needs. Open the ≡ menu → Types to do it.

This is a topic of its own — the Custom fields guide walks through it.

See your work through Views

Every list in the app is backed by a view — a small query that decides what appears and how it's grouped. Beside a pane's + button, the ▤ ▾ switcher lets you pick a built-in view, choose one you've saved, or select New view… to build one in the visual designer.

You can get a long way on the built-in views; reach for the designer when you want something like "all scenes where the POV character is Honor, grouped by status."

Turn on AI (optional)

AI is opt-in per project, in two parts:

1. Set the project's policy. Open ≡ menu → Project, then AI Policy. Choose Local only (models on your own machine, via Ollama) or Cloud allowed (Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter). Leave it Off to keep AI disabled entirely.
2. Add your provider details. Open ≡ menu → Settings… and go to the AI tab. Add API keys for any cloud providers you'll use, or point the app at your Ollama host for local models.

Once AI is on, you drive it with prompts — Jinja templates you can read and edit — and chats bound to those prompts. Two good next reads:

• Writing prompts — how prompts work and how to write your own.
• Context picker — how to hand a prompt exactly the scenes and lore it should know about.

Where to go next

You now have the shape of it: a manuscript in Draft, a world in Lore, and fields you control. When you're ready to go deeper, the other guides pick up from here:

• Custom fields — design your own node types and fields.
• Mutations — let a fact change partway through the story, so earlier scenes never leak what happens later.
• Roleplay — have characters take turns in a scene, each in their own voice.
• Writing prompts and Context picker — get the most out of AI.

Everything you write is on your disk, in plain files, the whole time. Enjoy the quiet.