Writing

Writing

For long texts: a novel, a fic. A project is a list of chapters, each one a Markdown file whose first # line is its title. The top row has the project, the Project menu (New project…, Import…, Export…, Rename…, Delete project…, Open folder, Keep versions), Story memory… and Copy for AO3.

Models only work when you ask: Send, a template, Review, Remember or a build of the story memory. Each such job reads the chapter as it is in the editor at that moment, does its work, and stops. While you write, nothing runs.

• Import…: paste text, or From file…: HTML (an AO3 download or a saved page keeps the italics best), PDF (needs pdftotext; check the paragraphs), Markdown or plain text. It is split at chapter headings (Chapter 3: Title, Prologue, Part Two, XII), at # lines, at lines that start with a word you type, or not at all. The list on the right shows what it found: untick what isn't a chapter (the title page and tags before the first chapter are unticked already). Into a new project, or after the last chapter of the open one.
• One line is one paragraph, as in a word processor: Enter starts the next one, and an empty line is only there when you put it there. (Projects from before, which had an empty line between paragraphs, are taken over once when opened; git keeps the version before.)
• Copy for AO3 puts the open chapter, without its title, on the clipboard as HTML: a <p> per paragraph, <em> for italics, scene breaks centred. Paste it into AO3's HTML box (or its rich text box). Changes still waiting are not in it.
• The editor: write or paste. Pasting from a web page or a word processor keeps italics and bold as *italics* and **bold**. Changed text is saved once a minute, on Ctrl+S, and when you go to another chapter or tab or close the window. A model always reads the text as it is in the editor when you ask, saved or not.
• New chapter goes at the end; ▲ ▼ move it; Done marks it finished for now (and tells you when its story memory is out of date; it starts nothing); Remember reads it into the story memory; Cast… picks who is in the chapter (see Story memory); Delete moves it to the project's .trash folder.
• Export…: the whole project as one file: Markdown, plain text, a web page (HTML), PDF, an e-book (EPUB) or Word (.docx), each chapter starting on a new page where that exists. All chapters, or only those marked done. Needs no extra programs.
• Delete project… moves the whole project to ~/AIcove/writing/.trash.
• Keep versions (git): each time you leave a chapter you changed (another chapter, another tab, closing the window, Ctrl+S) a commit is made in the project's folder, so every earlier version can be got back with git. It stays on this machine; nothing is pushed anywhere.
• The text size: Ctrl + mouse wheel, or Ctrl+= and Ctrl+-, in the editor. It is remembered.

Talking about the text (the panel on the right): pick a persona (it is remembered per project) and press Load if its model isn't running. Make one of your own for this on the Personas tab, with the prompt that suits how you work: an editor, a writing partner, a critic. It reads the open chapter as it stands. Each chapter has its own talk: go to another chapter and you get that one's; New talk deletes the chapter's talk and starts afresh. What should last beyond a talk goes into Style or Plans. A talk can grow as long as you like: the model gets its latest messages, as many as fit next to the chapter and the story memory (at most 12). On a chapter with text and no talk yet, the box holds your first prompt, ready for Enter: it is ~/AIcove/writing/first-prompt.txt, change it there (empty: nothing).

• Select text first to work on just that passage; with nothing selected, questions are about the whole chapter and new text goes in at the cursor.
• Ask or tell it in the box (Enter sends). A question gets an answer in the panel. When you ask for a change ("fix my English here", "more ominous", "expand this"), the new version comes into the chapter as changes: old text struck through in red, new text in green.
• Templates are prompts for jobs you do often, text files in ~/AIcove/writing/templates/ (the … button opens the folder). It starts with three, one of each kind, to change or replace with your own: English polish (on: passage: changes text, on the selection or passage by passage over the whole chapter, ✎ in the list), Review (on: review: notes only, see below) and Feedback (on: chat: sent as a message in the talk).
• Stop (in place of Send while it works) ends the answer or the template run there. What came so far is kept; changes already put into the text stay waiting for you.
• Think: lets a thinking model think first. Better sometimes, much slower; templates that change text never think.
• Put the last answer into the text: when a model gave a new version without marking it, this takes it in as changes anyway.
• The rules every request carries: the text is yours, dark themes, violence, sex and crude language stay exactly as written; nothing is softened, cut or moralised; your voice, tense and spelling stay. Use an uncensored model for writing like that.

Review (the second tab of the right panel): notes on the text, never changes.

• Check counts, without a model: phrases from your Slop list… (a text file, one phrase per line, * for any one word: change it to your taste), many gestures close together (smirks, shrugs, eyebrows…), long runs of dialogue with little around them, the same word three times in a few lines, sentences in a row that start the same way. These are patterns to look at, not errors: a phrase can be right where it is, and a dialogue-heavy scene can be fine.
• Review has the persona read the chapter (or only the selection) as an editor, with the story memory and what Check found, and write notes: the passage, what kind of problem (slop, cliché, repetition, continuity, error, dialogue, pacing, underdeveloped), why, and sometimes a minimal alternative. Its rules are in the Review template, not in the persona: in the Talk tab the persona stays your writing partner. A chapter may get no notes at all. A big model judges better; it takes a few minutes per chapter.
• Notes show as a soft wavy underline in the text and as a list. Click one to go to its passage. Try it puts its alternative into the text as changes (red and green, to accept or decline); Ask… takes it into the talk; Done, Dismiss (not a problem here; a new Check doesn't bring it back), Reopen.
• Notes are for the session: they stay while AIcove is open (also when you switch chapters) and are gone when you close it. Run Check or Review again on the text as it is then.
• Notes stay on their passage while you edit around and in them. When a passage is changed so much that the note no longer fits, the note becomes outdated and is no longer drawn in the text, instead of pointing at the wrong words.

Story memory… (the bible): a model can't read a whole novel at every question, so it reads each chapter once and keeps notes, and those go along with everything you ask instead.

• Build / update goes through the chapters in order: it reads one, writes its note, brings the Cast (only the characters in that chapter) and the Threads up to date, and goes on to the next. For each chapter it gets the summaries of the chapters before and the cast so far, not the chapters themselves. Chapters that already have a current note are skipped. It runs in the background; Stop, or closing the window, ends it, and the next build goes on from there. Make cast and threads again makes both anew from all the notes.
• Read with: the model that does the reading (remembered per project). A small one is enough and much quicker: about a minute a chapter with a 9B model, three with a 27B one. It is loaded for the build; your persona's own model comes back when you next ask it something. The reader works without a persona voice: a plain archivist that records what happens, nothing softened or left out.
• One chapter at a time: Remember under the chapter list reads the selected chapter (its note, then cast and threads); so does Read this chapter in the Story memory window. Models only work when you ask: marking a chapter Done reads nothing, it only tells you when the chapter's memory is out of date. Working through a story in order, Remember each chapter when you are through with it, and the memory knows the chapters before the one you are on. The chapter list shows "not in memory" and "memory outdated".
• Correct it: open a note or page, fix what is wrong, Save. What you changed is locked (a whole chapter note, or the sections of Cast and Threads, one per ## heading) and building never overwrites it; Unlock gives it back to the model.
• Style (yours): what the writing is going for: genre and tone, who it is for, pace, how much dialogue and description, the voice, what to avoid. It goes along with the talk, Review and the templates that rewrite, so the model judges and writes by your aim instead of its own taste; not with English polish (which only fixes) or the memory reader (which only records).
• Plans (yours): where the story is going, what must not be forgotten. Only you write it; the models read it as plans, not as what happened.
• Cast… (under the chapter list): tick who is in the chapter, and only their cast entries go along with it, plus anyone you name in your message. Without a pick, the people whose name comes up in the chapter go along (a name in the ## heading, in its (brackets), or a **Name:** line under one; a name part two entries share counts for neither). By names goes back to that.
• What a model gets with every question: your style and plans, the cast of the chapter, the threads and the chapter notes (only their summaries and facts, or only the chapters near the open one, when the model's context is small), next to the open chapter itself.

The changes: nothing a model writes is in your chapter until you accept it. Put the cursor in a change or right-click it: ✓ Accept, ✗ Decline, ✎ Edit… (change it, then take it); the cursor then goes on to the next change. The bar above the text has the same, ◀ ▶ to go from one to the next, and Accept all / Decline all (they ask first only while you haven't decided any change by hand yet; after that they take the rest); it also says what the change at the cursor is ("“upon” → “on”", "space → ¶"). A change of only spaces or line breaks, which can't be seen, marks its whole line. Changes wait across restarts and chapter switches; the chapter list shows how many each chapter has. You can type around them as usual.

Where it is: ~/AIcove/writing/<project>/: project.txt (title, the chapters in order, draft or done, the persona), chapters/c001.md …, bible/ (the story memory: chapters/ notes, cast.md, threads.md, style.md, plans.md), suggestions/ (the changes waiting), talk/ (the talks). The templates are in ~/AIcove/writing/templates/, the slop list is ~/AIcove/writing/slop.txt. Files can be edited by hand too; a chapter file put there joins at the end.

---

Made from the guide inside AIcove (cove/data/guide.md); it opens with the ? button.