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Eric Rhys Taylor edited this page Dec 31, 2025 · 39 revisions

Settings Reference

Access via Obsidian Settings → Community Plugins → Radial Timeline.

This page serves as a comprehensive reference for all plugin settings.

Source path

  • Source path: The root folder in your vault containing your manuscript scene files (e.g., Book 1). Leave blank to scan the entire vault.
  • Show source path as title: When enabled, the timeline uses the source folder name as the central title. When disabled, it displays "Work in Progress".

Publication and progress

Manage your project's milestones and status tracking.

  • Target completion date: Set an optional target date (YYYY-MM-DD). A marker will appear on the outer ring of the timeline.
  • Zero draft mode: A focused mode for reviewing. Intercepts clicks on scenes with Publish Stage: Zero and Status: Complete to open a "Pending Edits" modal instead of the full note.
  • Show completion estimate: Toggles the predicted completion tick mark on the timeline.
  • Completion estimate window (days): Rolling window (default 30, min 14, max 90) used to measure pace. Pace = completions in the active publish stage within the last N days ÷ N (scenes/day).

How the completion estimate works

  • Scope: Only the active publish stage (highest stage with any incomplete scenes). Other stages do not affect pace or remaining.
  • Total scenes for the active stage: max(unique stage scenes, highest scene number seen anywhere). This lets an early high-numbered scene (e.g., “Scene 70”) set a floor even if few notes exist.
  • Remaining: Total − Completed (stage-scoped, deduped by path, clamped to ≥0).
  • Date: Requires at least 2 completed scenes in the window for a confident pace. With fewer, the geometry stays but the label shows “?”.
  • Staleness colors: fresh (≤7d, normal), warn (8–10d, orange), late (11–20d, red), stalled (>20d or no pace/insufficient samples, red “?”). Geometry is frozen until new completions update the pace.

Note

Learn more about workflows in Core-Workflows.

Point of view

Control how narrative perspective is visualized.

  • Global POV: Sets a default Point of View mode (e.g., First Person, Third Person) for the entire project.
  • Scene level YAML overrides: You can override the global default on a per-scene basis using the POV YAML key.

Note

See Advanced-YAML#point-of-view for configuration details and supported keywords.

Chronologue mode settings

Configure the time-based visualization of your story.

  • Chronologue duration arc cap: Determines the maximum duration used for scaling the "duration arcs" (outer ring segments). Can be set to "Auto" or specific timeframes.
  • Discontinuity gap threshold: Controls the sensitivity of the Shift Mode (Time gaps). When the gap between scenes exceeds this threshold, an ∞ symbol appears. Default is auto-calculated (3× median gap).

Note

Read more about Chronologue-Mode.

Acts

Configure the high-level structure of your narrative ring.

  • Act count: Sets the number of acts (Minimum 3). This divides the Narrative, Subplot, and Gossamer timeline rings.
  • Act labels: (Optional) Define custom names for your acts (e.g., "Part 1, Part 2, Part 3").
  • Show act labels: Toggle to hide labels and show only act numbers.

Note

See Narrative-Mode for details on the act structure.

Story beats system

Configure the structural pacing guide for your story.

  • Story beats system: Select a preset structure (Save The Cat, Hero's Journey, Story Grid) or choose Custom.
  • Custom story beat system editor: (Visible when "Custom" is selected) Define your own beat names and assign them to acts. Drag to reorder.
  • Create story beat template notes: A utility button to generate empty beat notes in your source folder based on the selected system.

Note

Learn more about using beats in Gossamer-Mode.

Scene YAML templates & remapping

Manage how Radial Timeline reads and writes metadata.

  • Custom Metadata Mapping: Map existing frontmatter keys in your vault (e.g., story_date) to the system keys (e.g., When) without changing your files.
  • Advanced YAML editor: Enable this to customize the "Advanced" scene template. You can add, remove, or reorder optional fields while keeping the required system keys intact.

Note

Planetary Time

Configure custom calendars for sci-fi and fantasy worlds.

  • Enable planetary time: Activates the planetary time conversion features.
  • Active profile: Selects which custom calendar profile is currently active.
  • Profiles: Create and edit profiles. define day length, year length, epoch offsets, and custom month/day names.

Note

See Chronologue-Mode#planetary-time for usage details.

AI LLM for scene analysis

Configure the AI assistant for narrative analysis.

  • Enable AI LLM features: Toggles AI commands and visual indicators.
  • AI prompt role & context template: Customize the system prompt and context sent to the AI.
  • Model: Select your preferred LLM (Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, OpenAI GPT, or Local/Ollama).
  • API logging: When enabled, saves detailed JSON logs of every AI request and response to the AI output folder.

Note

Learn how to interpret the analysis in AI-Analysis.

Advanced

Technical configuration and file handling.

  • AI output folder: The folder where AI logs, manuscripts, and analysis files are saved. Default is AI.
  • Auto-expand clipped scene titles: Automatically expands truncated text in the radial view on hover.
  • Timeline readability scale: Adjusts the global font size of the timeline (Normal or Large).
  • Metadata refresh debounce: Technical setting to adjust how often the timeline refreshes while typing (default 1000ms).
  • Reset subplot color precedence: Clears manually assigned dominant subplot colors.

Visual customization

  • Publishing stage colors: Customize the colors used for the publishing stages (Zero Draft, Author's Draft, House Edit, Press Ready).
  • Subplot ring colors: Customize the 16-color palette used for subplots.

Hardware Recommendations

The radial timeline is designed for high pixel density displays (around 200 ppi or higher) for optimal visual quality.

  • All Apple Retina displays — 2x pixel density.
  • Recommend Windows systems with 4k displays or higher. (Tested on 1080p 2550x1440)
  • Tablets.

If you're experiencing visual quality issues on Windows, please check your display scaling settings.

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