Get the most out of Author Desk

Your Desk is the home base for everything you write. Create a book, add chapters, and open the editor - all from the sidebar.

1. 1

   Open the Desk

   After signing in, you land on the Desk - your personal dashboard for streaks, goals, word counts, and recent documents.

2. 2

   Create a book

   In the sidebar, click the New Book button. A book is a folder that holds chapters and scenes.

3. 3

   Add chapters

   Inside a book, click New Page to create a chapter. You can nest pages to organize parts, chapters, and scenes however you like.

4. 4

   Start writing

   Click any chapter in the sidebar to open the editor. Every keystroke saves in real time - there is no save button.

A focused rich-text editor built for long-form fiction, with grammar checks, themes, and three writing modes.

1. 1

   Format your text

   Use the toolbar in Classic mode, or the floating menu in Modern and Minimalist modes, for bold, italic, headings, lists, links, images, and to-do items.

2. 2

   Switch modes and themes

   In document settings, choose Classic, Modern, or Minimalist mode, and pick Light, Dark, Auto, or a fully custom theme. Margins and fonts (20 Google Fonts) are per-document.

3. 3

   Grammar & spelling

   LanguageTool underlines issues as you type. Click an underline to open the bubble menu and apply a suggestion - or ignore it to add the word to your dictionary.

A focused set of AI tools that operate on your selection. Select text, click the AI button, pick a tool.

1. 1

   Select and invoke

   Highlight any passage in the editor and click the AI button in the toolbar (or the floating menu).

2. 2

   Pick a tool

   Fix Spelling & Grammar, Extend, Reduce, Continue, Summarize, Review, and Custom (your own instruction). Each is tuned to keep responses short and usable. Tone rewrites, Style by Sample, and writing in a character's voice each have their own section below.

3. 3

   Review and insert

   Most tools stream the result directly into your document at the cursor. Summarize and Review show in a read-only panel that never touches your draft. To rewrite existing prose in a saved voice, use Style by Sample - see the section below.

Teach the AI your voice. Paste a passage of your own writing, attach it to a draft, and every AI action on that draft will mirror your cadence, vocabulary, and rhythm instead of falling back to generic prose.

1. 1

   Open the Style page

   Click Style in the top navbar (next to Wiki). This is your library of saved voice samples - you can keep as many as you like, e.g. one per genre or one per series.

2. 2

   Add a sample

   Click the + button in the sidebar. Give it a clear label ("Literary first-person", "Action thriller"), paste 200–5000 words of your own prose into the text area, and hit Save. Longer samples (1000+ words) anchor the voice far more reliably than the minimum.

3. 3

   Pick the right kind of prose

   Choose a passage that shows the voice you want the AI to imitate - narrative, dialogue, interiority, in your typical register. Avoid samples that mix several voices or styles in the same excerpt.

4. 4

   Attach a sample to a draft

   Open the chapter you're writing, open Document Settings (the cog icon), scroll to the AI writing style section, and pick a sample from the dropdown. The change applies immediately - there's no save button.

5. 5

   How it actually works

   Every time you use an AI tool on that draft - Continue, Extend, Reduce, Refine, Match my style, the Librarian's rewrite suggestions - the server prepends your sample to the AI's system prompt with explicit instructions to match your cadence, sentence-length distribution, and vocabulary register. You don't pay extra tokens for samples on your draft; they're injected only when the AI runs.

Style by Sample opens a dedicated side panel that rewrites finished prose in the voice of one of your saved writing samples. Pick a scope, pick the sample to match, run, and iterate with follow-up instructions until the passage reads the way you want it.

1. 1

   Open the panel

   Click the AI button in the toolbar and pick Style by Sample. The panel slides in from the right and pushes the document leftward so the editor stays fully visible behind it.

2. 2

   Pick a scope

   Choose what to rewrite: Selection (just what you've highlighted), Current paragraph (the paragraph the cursor sits in), or Whole chapter (everything in this document, in a single pass).

3. 3

   Pick the sample to match

   A sample dropdown lists every writing sample you've saved on the Style page. The panel matches exactly the sample you pick here - independent of whichever sample is attached to this draft in Document Settings.

4. 4

   Run the rewrite

   The rewrite streams into the panel turn by turn - never into the editor - so you can read it next to the original without anything in your document changing yet. Use "Try again with…" to follow up: "sharper dialogue", "less abstraction", "more concrete sensory detail". Each follow-up uses the previous turn's output as its source.

5. 5

   Apply

   When a turn reads right, click Apply on that turn - the captured range in the editor is replaced with the rewritten text. If a turn was cut off by the model's output cap (rare, but possible on very long chapters), it's flagged in amber and Apply asks for confirmation before replacing your original.

Rewrite any passage in one of eight distinct moods while preserving the meaning and story beats.

1. 1

   Select your passage

   Highlight the sentence, paragraph, or scene you want to recolor.

2. 2

   Open the Change Tone menu

   From the AI menu, open Change Tone and pick one: Humorous, Suspenseful, Romantic, Dark, Optimistic, Pessimistic, Mysterious, or Dramatic.

3. 3

   Iterate

   Not quite right? Run another tone over the original, or combine with Extend / Reduce to fine-tune length.

Rewrite any text as a specific character from your Wiki - dialogue or narration in their voice, using their personality, speech patterns, and backstory.

1. 1

   Create the character first

   Character Speech pulls from the Wiki, so the character must exist there with at least a personality and speech-pattern entry.

2. 2

   Select the line

   Highlight the dialogue or narration you want transformed.

3. 3

   Pick the character

   Click the Characters button in the editor toolbar (the person icon) and choose the character. The rewrite streams in matching their voice, quirks, and vocabulary.

A wiki for your whole story world - Characters, Locations, Organizations, Events, and Systems. Character profiles alone carry 25+ fields covering personality, appearance, history, and voice.

1. 1

   Open the Wiki

   Click Wiki in the top navbar, then pick a type tab: Characters, Locations, Organizations, Events, or Systems. Each type has its own fields and a Wikipedia-style infobox.

2. 2

   Add an entry manually

   Type a name into the Add box and press Enter. Then fill in the fields - a character carries 25+: age, species, appearance, personality, motivations, fears, quirks, biography, speech patterns, memorable quotes, role, first appearance, and more.

3. 3

   Or auto-generate a character from your manuscript

   In the Characters tab, use Create from Manuscript: type the character's name and the AI searches your synced documents and extracts a full profile automatically. Sync the manuscript first - see Syncing below.

Have in-character conversations with anyone in your Wiki. Great for interviews, emotional tests, and backstory dives.

1. 1

   Open Character Chat

   Go to Librarian → Character (or open a character from the Wiki and click Chat).

2. 2

   Pick a character

   Choose any Wiki character to talk to.

3. 3

   Ask anything

   Try prompts like In-character opinion, Backstory dive, Emotional test, or Regrets - or just have a natural conversation. The character stays grounded in their profile.

An AI chat assistant that has read your entire synced manuscript. Ask it anything about your book and it answers grounded in your actual text.

1. 1

   Sync first

   The Librarian only sees documents you have synced. See the Syncing section below.

2. 2

   Open the Librarian

   Click Librarian in the sidebar and start asking - no setup needed.

3. 3

   Ask questions

   Examples: Does my timeline hold up? Find every scene where X happens. My second act drags - what can I cut? Did I contradict a character detail?

Syncing turns your manuscript into searchable meaning for the Librarian and Wiki auto-generation. You only pay for what you sync.

1. 1

   Sync a document or book

   Click the brain icon in the editor toolbar to sync the current document, or use the book-level action to sync every chapter at once.

2. 2

   Check the status

   Each document shows its sync state: Never synced, Stale (edited since last sync), or Current. Stale docs should be re-synced before you ask the Librarian about them.

3. 3

   Re-sync incrementally

   Re-syncing only processes chunks that actually changed, so keeping a book fresh is cheap.

Share any finished piece as a public read-only page with a shareable URL.

1. 1

   Publish the document

   From the document menu, choose Publish. This produces a public URL under /published/[id].

2. 2

   Share the link

   Send the link to readers, beta testers, or your editor - no sign-in required on their end.

3. 3

   Unpublish any time

   Toggle publishing off from the same menu. The public URL stops working immediately.

Three plans, all with unlimited documents. AI credits are the only thing that scales.

1. 1

   Pick a plan

   Free (500 credits), Pro ($12/mo, 5,000 credits), Max ($39/mo, 50,000 credits). Everything non-AI - the editor, Desk, Wiki, publishing - works fully on Free.

2. 2

   Upgrade or downgrade

   Go to Billing in the sidebar. Upgrades apply instantly; downgrades take effect at the end of your current period.

3. 3

   Credit reset

   Credits reset at the start of every billing month. Running out just pauses AI tools - your manuscripts are never touched.