Getting started

Create your account

Use Create an account on the log-in page. Fill in Your name, Email and Password (at least 8 characters), then press Create account. Your name is shown next to every decision you make.

Joining a team instead

If a teammate sent you an invite link, open it. The page names the studio, who invited you and Your role. Log in or create an account, then join. Invite links work once and expire; if one has expired or was used, ask for a new link. Password reset by email isn’t available yet: contact your studio owner.

Set up your studio and first project

A new account walks through three steps: Studio, First project and Get started.

• Name your studio: your team’s shared space. Type a Studio name and press Continue. You become its owner.
• What are you writing?: a project holds one story world’s lore, scenes and canon. Type a Story or project name, pick its Medium (novel or prose, film or series, or game) and press Create project.
• How do you want to start?: pick a sample story or your own files (see below).

Start from a sample or your own story

• Try the Broken Tide demo: press Load demo and take the tour. It adds Broken Tide, an island story with planted contradictions, and Lantern Row, a three-page sample with five preloaded canon facts, each in its own project. Your first project doesn’t change.
• Load The Ashbell Pass: a bigger mountain-town game story with NPC schedules, quests and items, in its own project.
• Load Sherlock Holmes: two novels and five stories by Arthur Conan Doyle (public domain), in its own project.
• Load the Oz books and Load Alice: L. Frank Baum’s first three Oz books and Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books (public domain), one source per chapter, each in its own project.
• Bring your own story: opens your project’s Home, where you import Markdown, text or Word (.docx) files, or write a document in the app.
• Skip for now: you can load a sample, import files or write a document any time from Home.

Load a sample later

• On Home, Load demo set replaces everything in the open project with Broken Tide. The audit trail keeps its history; other projects aren’t touched.
• In Studio settings → Projects, New project has a Start with list: an empty project or any sample. Press Create and open.
• On a project’s own page, Danger zone lists every sample with Replace with this. It replaces everything in that project, so it always asks first.
• Samples come in their own projects; switch between them from Switch project at the top of the sidebar.

Try the demo without an account

On the home page, the log-in page or the sign-up page, press Try the demo. You get a demo account with three projects (Broken Tide, The Ashbell Pass and Sherlock Holmes), and Broken Tide opens with the guided tour. Most of each story’s canon is already in place, marked Sample canon (preloaded): nobody decided it, so it never counts as a person’s decision. A short queue is left in Review for you, including the traps (a figure of speech, a made-up quote), the conflict scan has already run, and Broken Tide and The Ashbell Pass each have a rule change waiting for your decision. The demo account isn’t tied to an email: use sign up in the banner to make your own account.

The guided tour

A short tour of the Broken Tide demo. The core comes first, five steps: a figurative candidate, a made-up quote, accepting what holds up, a caught conflict and a change’s impact. Then choose Keep going: wiki, timeline, Ask, agents for six more short stops (a character’s page, the timeline, Ask, the reader, export and agents), or Explore on my own. Back, Next and Skip tour are on every card, and Esc ends it. It opens after Load demo and take the tour or Try the demo; start it again from Take the tour in the Getting started checklist on Home. It only points at the screen and moves on when you act; it never clicks or decides for you.

The Getting started checklist

Editors, admins and owners see Getting started on Home. Each step ticks itself off when it’s done in the project, for anyone on the team: add a document, review a candidate, see your canon, run a conflict scan, propose a change, invite a teammate (admins and owners) and, optionally, connect an agent. Hide puts it away for you in this project; Show getting started brings it back.

Invited to a studio with no projects?

You’ll see No projects yet. Ask a studio owner or admin to create one, then press Check again.

Who can do what

Viewer

Join by invite and read every project in the studio. Doesn’t see the Getting started checklist.

Editor

Sees the checklist. Imports and writes documents.

Admin, owner

Create projects, start them from a sample, load or replace a sample in a project, and invite teammates.

Roles are per studio. Roles and permissions has the full list.