The outline

The outline decides what chapters exist. Everything downstream — the editor's rail, the table of contents, the context every AI call carries — is built from it.

Two ways to start

✦ Generate with AI takes your premise and returns a coherent chapter arc: a title and a goal for each chapter, plus sub-points where they help. Pick the model, check the credit estimate, and generate.

✎ Write it myself seeds the number of blank chapters you set on the premise screen, and you fill them in.

Neither is permanent. You can regenerate, and you can edit any chapter by hand afterwards.

Editing chapters

Each chapter row carries a title, a goal — one line saying what the chapter has to accomplish — and optional sub-points.

The goal is not decoration. It is included in the context of every AI call for that chapter, and it is what keeps a generated chapter on task.

Sub-points are guidance, not structure. They do not become sub-chapters; they are beats for the AI and reminders for you.

In a novel, sub-points are the chapter's scenes, in order. They are never printed as headings.

Scene cards (novels)

Each chapter of a novel also has a scene card, folded under its sub-points. It is the chapter's dramatic plan:

• Viewpoint: whose head we are in.
• What they want here, and what stands in the way.
• How it turns: how the chapter ends changed. A win with a cost ("yes, but…"), a loss that makes things worse ("no, and…"), or a revelation.
• Emotional shift, for example guarded calm → fury.
• Structural beat: the turning point it carries, from the structure on the premise.
• Plants and Pays off: what this chapter sets up for later, and which earlier setups land here. An emotional moment only lands when it was set up.
• How it ends: the pull into the next chapter.

When the assistant plans the arc of a novel, it fills a card for every chapter. You can edit any line. Every chapter the AI writes follows its card, and the chapters around it can see its beat and its turn.

When it re-plans an outline you have already written into, it reads the book memory's summary of each written chapter, so "fix the sagging middle" is answered against what the middle actually says, not only what it was planned to say.

Reorder with the arrows, add and delete freely. Chapters keep their contents when they move.

Link the card to your Codex

Below the card's fields you can choose its viewpoint character, its setting, and any other Codex entries that matter in the chapter, including entries from a world the book is set in. Drafting and review then use those entries as they are now: rename a character in the Codex and the next draft uses the new name.

Suggesting codex entries

The generate card has an "Also suggest codex entries" checkbox.

With it ticked, the same single call also returns characters, places and terms it invented while building the arc, and files them into your story codex. It costs no extra credits.

Two things happen that are worth knowing:

• Entries are deduplicated by name against what is already in your codex, so regenerating does not pile up duplicates.
• If the arc had to fight something you had already pinned as canon, you get an amber conflicts list saying which entry and what the problem was — rather than the AI quietly overwriting your canon or quietly ignoring it.

Regenerating

Once an outline exists, ↻ Regenerate with AI replaces it. It asks first, because regenerating discards the arc you have.

It does not delete chapter text. But it does change which chapters exist, so regenerate before you draft, not after.

What to watch for

• Write the codex before the first generation if you already know your world. The outline generator reads it, so pinned canon shapes the arc instead of fighting it afterwards. There is a codex button on this screen for exactly that reason.
• A generated outline is a draft. Editing goals by hand before you write is the cheapest possible time to fix the book's structure.