How your prose is steered
User guide. When the app writes or edits prose for you, four things tell the model how it should read: the app's own craft rules, your style notes, your characters' voices, and the scene's brief. This guide says what each one is for, which one wins when they disagree, and how to check what was sent.
The prose actions are Draft scene, Continue, Expand, Describe, Rephrase, Shorten, Line edit, Show, don't tell, Tighten grammar and Finalize roleplay. Every one of them sends the model Prose craft, your style notes, the viewpoint character's voice and the narration settings, so a passage from Continue is held to the same standard as a scene from Draft scene.
What a prose action sends
- Prose craft. A short set of rules the app ships, for any book: no skipped time inside a passage, one viewpoint held steadily, a narrator who never tells the reader what a moment meant, and plain dialogue tags. Each is a default, not a law.
- Your style notes. Every note whose Context policy is Always include goes out with every prose action. A style note says how this book, series or author is written: how thought and dialogue are set on the page, how frank the diction is, what the book never does.
- The viewpoint character's entry. The character whose eyes the scene is seen through, from the scene's narration fields. If their entry describes a voice, that voice shapes the narration as well as their lines.
- The narration settings. The point of view and tense, from the scene, or inherited from its chapter, act or project.
- The brief. For Draft scene and Continue, the scene's summary. For Expand, Describe and Rephrase, the passage you selected and the text around it. The other editing actions see only what you selected.
Everything else in your lore is world material: what happened, who is who. The model uses it as facts for the scene, never as text for the page. It tells a style note from a world note by what the note says, so a plain note with style rules in it works the same as a style note.
Which one wins
The four are arranged from broad to narrow, and the narrowest wins:
- The brief beats everything: "she shouts" in a brief beats a voice that never raises it.
- A character's voice beats a style note, but only on how things are said. A voice never changes how things are set on the page: if the book italicises inner thought, it does so whoever narrates.
- A style note beats Prose craft. A book's note beats its series' note, and a series' note beats the author's.
- Prose craft holds wherever nothing narrower says otherwise. A style note that welcomes descriptive dialogue verbs gets them, though Prose craft asks for plain tags.
Style notes
A style note holds two things, each rule in one line with a short reason:
- Mechanics — how inner thought, dialogue, interruptions, flashbacks, documents, emphasis, numbers and invented terms are set on the page; how far violence and intimacy go; how background reaches the reader.
- Manner — the stance every voice shares: frank or euphemistic, how far figures of speech go, how a paragraph is built (what one paragraph holds, and in what order). Then a short Never list, three to six things this book never does.
Every rule is written so it would fit any story told in this style. The note goes out with every prose action, and a word in it tends to turn up in the drafts, so the story's own objects, trades and invented terms stay out of it.
It leaves out what lives elsewhere:
- the point of view and tense, which are the narration settings
- any one character's voice, which belongs in their entry
- facts about the story, such as what things are called or who the viewpoint character is, which belong in lore entries
- sample passages, since a sample has a voice and would pull every viewpoint toward it
- naming conventions, which are about the world, not the prose: keep them in a note of their own (see Lore, Notes the AI always sees)
Notes stack by layer. If your books sit inside a series or an author folder (see Getting started), each layer can have its own style note, and a book sees every note in its chain. A nearer note doesn't repeat the farther one; it names only what changes, and says so: "Inner thought: italicised; this book departs from the series here." The model can't tell which layer a note comes from, so the departure has to be written in the note.
Building one
The built-in prompt Build a style note writes one with you.
- Open the project that should hold the note: the outermost one for your own style, a book for what that book changes.
- In the Lore pane, open + and choose ✨ Draft Style note.
- Paste a chapter or a few pages, your own or a published book whose style you want, and send. Or press Send with the box empty, and the builder tells you what to paste. It reads the rules off the page and says which it inferred and which need your call.
- Where the pages leave something open, it shows you two short versions of one moment and asks which is closer.
- In a book, pick the inherited style notes under Style notes this builds on. The builder then asks only what this book does differently.
- Commit the note, then set its Context policy to Always include. The builder can't do that for you: only you decide what goes out with every prompt. Until you set it, the prose actions never see the note.
A new project starts with no style note. Until you add one, the prose follows Prose craft, your narration settings, your characters' voices and the brief.
A style note you made earlier as a plain Note keeps working: the prose actions read it the same way, as long as it is set to Always include. The builder is offered only on Style notes, so to rework an older note with it, draft a new Style note, paste the old note's text into your first message along with any pages, and delete the old note once the new one is committed.
Voices
A character's voice lives in their own entry, in two parts, because they apply at different times:
- The narrating voice applies only while they are the viewpoint: what they notice first and never notice, what they compare things to, how deep their thoughts run and how a thought surfaces, how the body registers. It shapes the narration, not just their lines. When someone else is the viewpoint, the narration doesn't take it on, even in a scene they're in.
- The speaking voice applies whenever they speak: register, sentence length, rhythm, and what they leave unsaid.
Add a short sample passage, about 150 words with them as the viewpoint. It is the strongest steer a model gets. The model writes like it, never from it: it won't reuse its sentences or images.
Revise entry writes a voice section in these three parts when you ask it to. A narrator with a personality of their own gets an entry with only a narrating voice.
Checking what was sent
Start Draft scene on a scene and open the Context door on its composer (see What the AI sees, Reading the Context door). The editing actions carry the same craft rules, style notes, voice and narration settings, so those parts of what you see there hold for them too:
- System shows Prose craft, the voice instructions and the narration settings, as the model reads them.
- Stable lore and Volatile lore list the entries that went out. Your style notes are there if they are set to Always include, and so is the viewpoint character's entry. Open one to see exactly what the model received.
If a draft ignores your style, look there first: a style note that isn't in the list was never sent.