The story codex

The codex is your book's canon. Anything in it is handed to the AI as established truth it may not contradict, on every call — outlines, chapter drafts, enhancements and the consistency audit alike.

Open it from the 📖 tab beside the chapter list (on a phone, Codex on the bar along the bottom of the screen), or from the outline screen (where it is worth filling in before the first generation).

What goes in it

Each entry is a name and a detail. Keep details factual and short. "Mara — 34, left-handed, blind in the right eye since the fire, never uses her sister's name aloud" is worth more than a paragraph of characterisation, because it is checkable.

Every keystroke autosaves with the rest of the book.

Linking entries

While you write an entry, type @ and pick another entry from the list. Its name goes into your text as plain words, and the two are linked. List | Map, at the top of the codex, switches to the map view, which draws every entry and every link.

Characters are yours, not just this book's

A character in the codex is a character in your character library — the same record a picture book's cast uses. That means:

• From your library, above the Characters section, offers everyone you have made for your other books. One click and they are in this book too, as the same character. Write a picture book about the fox from your novel, and she arrives with her description — and, if you drew her, her picture.
• Editing a character here edits them everywhere they appear. One character, one answer — the AI is never given two different descriptions of her.
• Removing a character takes them out of this book only. They stay in your library for your other books, and can be added back.
• Merging and deleting happen on the shelf. Characters, on the bookshelf, merges two records of one person and deletes a character from every book. When the writing assistant suggests a character you already have elsewhere, its card offers that one.

A character with a reference picture shows it beside their name.

Characters in a novel

In a novel, the assistant writes a character as a profile: role, appearance, what they want, what they need, the lie they believe, the wound behind it, their voice (how they speak, and what they never say), their relationships and their arc. Every chapter the AI writes follows each character's voice.

You can ask the assistant to deepen a character the codex already has. It offers the fuller profile beside the current one, and nothing changes until you accept.

Why it works

Chapters are written one at a time, and a model asked to write chapter 19 has no memory of chapter 3. The codex is what closes that gap: it is injected into the prompt as an immutable block, grouped by kind, ahead of the outline and the story so far.

This is the difference between a book where a character's eyes change colour and one where they do not.

Deep research

The codex is also where grounded web research lands.

Give it a topic and Manuscript Studio plans a set of questions, searches the live web, and files what it finds as research entries with their sources — recorded from the pages actually fetched, so the model cannot invent a citation. Those findings then join your canon like anything else you pinned.

Charged for the tokens it uses, from about 10 credits, and refunded in full if it fails. Paid plans only. See Consistency and research.

Checking your book against it

At the bottom of the codex: ✦ Check N chapters. One metered call audits what you have written against your canon and returns specific contradictions. See Consistency and research.

What to watch for

• The codex is canon, not suggestion. Pin something wrong and the AI will defend it consistently throughout the book.
• Blank entries are skipped, so a half-finished entry costs nothing and does no harm.
• It has a size limit. A codex of a hundred detailed entries is trimmed to fit the prompt. Prefer the facts that constrain the writing over the ones that merely describe it.

Shared worlds

If the book is set in a world from Worlds on the shelf, the world's entries appear in the Codex under Shared worlds, and on the Story map. They are read-only here: edit them once in the world, and every book set there sees the change. Drafting uses them like the book's own entries.