All features

Write the chapters

The Smart Editor

A full-screen editor where every AI tool works on the passage you selected.

What it is

The Smart Editor is a full-screen editor for one chapter at a time. It is a normal rich-text editor — you can type, format and rearrange freely — with AI tools attached to whatever you have selected. Ask it to improve, expand, shorten or rewrite a passage, or give it a custom instruction, and the result comes back as a word-level diff you accept or reject rather than a silent replacement. Everything is saved automatically, and every change is recorded in an edit history you can restore from.

Where to find it: Workspace → chapter bar → Edit. Also from the chapter reader on phones.

What this covers

  • Full-screen rich text editing
  • Select text for AI actions
  • Improve, expand, shorten, rewrite, continue
  • Custom instructions for any edit
  • Word-level diff with accept or reject
  • Regenerate an edit you did not like
  • Tone selector
  • The editor shows the book as you write: serif, indents, drop caps, scene breaks
  • Paragraph styles: headings, block quotes, bulleted and numbered lists
  • Bold, italic, strikethrough and clear formatting
  • Em dashes, ellipses and the quotation marks your language uses
  • Smart quotes and dashes, typed for you in your book's language
  • Tidy typography across a chapter that arrived with straight quotes
  • Book or Plain typography while you edit
  • Keyboard shortcuts for everything, listed under Ctrl+/
  • Scene outline sidebar: jump to any scene, with its word count
  • Find and replace with highlighting
  • Live word count and readability score
  • Automatic saving every 30 seconds
  • Uncertainty markers the AI leaves for you
  • Insert and resize images
  • Chapter split and merge
  • Edit history with version restore
  • Book-style preview pane
  • Preview paginated like print: pages fill to the bottom, drop caps open a chapter or a scene
  • Zoom controls

How to use it

  1. 1

    Open a chapter

    Press Edit in the chapter bar. The chapter opens full screen with a toolbar of formatting and AI tools.

  2. 2

    Select a passage

    Highlight the text you want to work on. A floating menu appears with the AI actions that apply to a selection.

  3. 3

    Ask for the change

    Choose Improve, Expand, Shorten or Rewrite, or type a custom instruction such as "make her sound less certain". Only the selection is sent, with a little surrounding text so the join reads naturally.

  4. 4

    Read the diff before accepting

    The result arrives as a word-level diff: green for additions, red for removals. Accept it, reject it, or regenerate for a different attempt.

  5. 5

    Give a paragraph its shape

    The style menu on the left of the toolbar shows what the cursor is in and changes it: chapter heading, scene heading, sub-heading, block quote, bulleted or numbered list, or plain body text. Bold and italic sit beside it, and the rest — strikethrough, clear formatting — are in the same menu. The editor renders what you choose in the book's own typography, so you can see the finished page without leaving it; the footer switches that between Book and Plain if the drop caps are too much while you work.

  6. 6

    Find your way around a long chapter

    The outline button opens a sidebar listing the chapter's own divisions — every heading and every scene break — with the word count of each section beside it. Click one to jump straight to it. The list is built from what you have written, so it fills itself in as you add scene headings and breaks, and the section you are currently in stays highlighted.

  7. 7

    Find and replace across the chapter

    Open find and replace from the toolbar. Matches are highlighted as you type, with next and previous navigation.

  8. 8

    Restore an earlier version if you need to

    Edit history lists every change with a diff of what it replaced, and lets you restore any previous version.

  9. 9

    Look at the finished page

    Preview lays the chapter out as printed pages. It is typeset the way a book is: pages fill to the bottom, so a paragraph that will not fit is broken at a word and carries on overleaf, flush left, the way print does it — never pushed whole to the next page leaving a third of this one blank. A drop cap opens a chapter or a scene, not every page. The footer strip under the editor switches between Book and Plain typography and sets the text width and zoom.

What it gives you

Nothing is replaced without your consent

Every AI edit is a diff you approve. You never discover afterwards that a paragraph you liked was rewritten while you were not looking.

Edits stay local

Asking to tighten one paragraph sends that paragraph, not the whole chapter. The rest of your prose is not quietly rewritten around the change.

It is a real editor first

You can ignore every AI tool and simply write. Formatting, find and replace, word count, autosave and version history are all there regardless.

The AI flags what it does not know

When drafting needs a detail you never gave, it leaves a marked placeholder highlighted in the text rather than inventing a fact.

Good to know

  • AI edits work on a selection. Rewriting a whole chapter is possible but is a deliberate, confirmed action because it is expensive and drastic.
  • The readability score is calibrated for English. It is a useful relative signal in Ukrainian and Czech but not an accurate grade level.
  • Autosave runs every 30 seconds and on close, but a hard browser crash mid-sentence can still lose the last few seconds of typing.
  • Edit history is capped at the most recent 500 entries per book. Older entries are dropped.
  • Underline is not a book format — in a manuscript italics do that job, so Ctrl+U applies italic.
  • Smart typography reads one word at a time, so a single quote that opens a word — as in ‘Tis — is treated as an opening quote. Fix it from Insert → Special character, or type it and press Backspace once.
  • Tidy typography converts the chapter you are in, not the whole book, and only when you ask. Nothing is rewritten just because you opened it.

Questions

Will the AI change my writing without asking?

No. Every AI edit is presented as a diff with accept and reject. Nothing is applied until you accept it.

Can I undo an accepted edit?

Yes, in two ways: normal undo in the editor, and edit history, which lets you restore any earlier version of the chapter.

What are the highlighted bracketed notes in my draft?

They are uncertainty markers. When drafting required a fact you never supplied, the AI marks the spot instead of inventing something. Replace them with the real detail.

Why did my quotation marks change shape as I typed?

That is smart typography. A book prints curly quotation marks, em dashes and a real ellipsis where a keyboard gives you straight quotes, two hyphens and three dots — and it uses the marks of the book's language, so Ukrainian gets « », Czech gets „ “ and English gets “ ”. Backspace immediately after a substitution puts the plain character back, and you can switch the whole thing off under Insert → Smart quotes and dashes. Prose you did not type — an AI draft, a paste from Word — keeps whatever it arrived with until you run Insert → Tidy typography.

Can I use it without the AI at all?

Yes. It is a complete manuscript editor on its own — formatting, search, images, word count, autosave and version history all work without a single AI call.

Start your first chapter

Every new account starts with two free credits, enough to talk a whole chapter through, have it drafted, and see how it reads.

Get started free