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Writing with AI
DasBook includes AI features to help you write — but with an important philosophy: the AI is your assistant, not your co-author. The ideas in your story are always yours.
DasBook ships with a built-in rule that is sent to every AI agent that connects to your project. This rule cannot be turned off, edited, or overridden — it's baked into the application:
The AI is an assistant, not an author. It must never generate creative content — plot, dialogue, descriptions, scenes, or character decisions — on its own initiative.
This is a core design decision, not a setting. We believe the story that comes out of DasBook should be your story. The AI shapes the words; you shape the story.
Whether you're using the built-in AI Chat, connecting Claude Desktop, or any other AI agent through the MCP server — they all receive this rule before they can interact with your content.
Because of the Authorship Rule:
- Fix grammar and spelling
- Expand your notes into full prose (when you tell it what to write)
- Suggest better word choices
- Check your writing against your Codex rules
- Answer questions about your own story
- Organize and structure your content
- Research topics for your story
- Invent plot points you didn't ask for
- Create new characters on its own
- Decide what happens next in your story
- Write dialogue you haven't directed
- Fill in story gaps with its own ideas
If you ask the AI something vague like "write the next chapter," it will ask you questions: What do you want to happen? Who's involved? What's the tone? The creative decisions are always yours.
While the Authorship Rule is permanent, you can customize how the AI works for each universe through AI Rules (see below) and the Codex. These let you set tone, style, terminology, and world facts — the guardrails within which the AI operates.
Click the floating chat button in the bottom-right corner to open a conversation with the AI. This is for:
- Asking questions about your story ("When did Sonny arrive in Boston?")
- Brainstorming ("What are some reasons a character might refuse to leave?")
- Getting information ("What do mockingbirds eat?")
The AI can see your universe's content, so it knows your characters, timeline, and research. It uses this context to give relevant answers.
Deep Analyze mode: Toggle this on in the chat for more thorough context searching. It uses semantic search to find the most relevant content across your entire universe.
Click AI Edit at the bottom of the editor to ask the AI to modify the current document. This is for:
- "Check this against the codex for consistency"
- "Fix grammatical errors"
- "Expand the description of the garden"
- "Tighten the dialogue — make it punchier"
The AI will return a modified version of your document. You'll see a side-by-side comparison with changes highlighted:
- Green text = something the AI added
- Red strikethrough = something the AI removed
You can Accept the changes or Reject them. If you accept, DasBook automatically saves a snapshot of the original first, so you can always go back.
Click the Dictate button in the editor footer to speak your text instead of typing. DasBook will transcribe what you say and insert it at your cursor. Click again to stop.
This uses your computer's built-in speech recognition — no internet required.
DasBook supports three AI providers. Set yours up in Settings > AI Connections:
| Provider | What It Is |
|---|---|
| Ollama | Free AI that runs on your own computer. Requires installing Ollama. |
| Claude | Anthropic's AI. Best quality. Requires an API key from console.anthropic.com. |
| Custom API | Works with OpenAI, Google Gemini, Groq, Mistral, and others. Enter your provider's URL and API key. |
You can switch providers at any time without losing any content.
Each universe can have its own AI rules that customize how the AI behaves for that specific project. Open AI Rules from the left sidebar to set rules like:
- "This story is written in past tense, third person"
- "Sonny always speaks with Southern slang"
- "The tone is humorous but with emotional depth"
The AI reads these rules before every interaction with your universe.
The AI Chat isn't just for asking questions — it's a full control center for your universe. Instead of navigating menus and clicking buttons, just describe what you want:
"Create a book called The Garden Chronicles with five chapters."
"Add a character named Sal the Rat. He's scrappy, street-smart, and speaks in short clipped sentences."
"Add a codex rule that all birds in this story can understand each other regardless of species, but they can't understand mammals."
"What did I establish about Tully's personality in chapter three?"
You can brainstorm, build structure, create codex rules, ask questions about your own story, and manage your entire project from the chat panel. The AI does the clicking for you.
Dictate vs. Chat: Dictate (in the editor footer) is for typing with your voice — it inserts spoken words into the document at your cursor, like speech-to-text. AI Chat is where you give the AI instructions to create, modify, and search your universe.