Documentation
Story Management
The Desk is your story library. This page covers creating stories, organizing story elements, the file system inside each story, and export options.
The Desk — your story library
All your stories live at /stories. Each card shows the story's genre tags, tense, language, mood, time period, POV, word count, and last-edited date. Click Continue writing on any card to open it.
Creating Stories
+ New Story
Start from a blank slate. Configure title, description, genre, tense, language, mood, time period, and POV during creation.
- • Genre and tone
- • Point of view
- • Tense and language
- • Target word count
- • Banned words list
Import from Text BETA
Paste or upload an existing manuscript (DOCX or TXT, up to 500,000 words) at /stories/mine. AI extracts a title, description, genre, characters, locations, items, and timeline events, and splits the text into chapters.
- • Step 1: paste or upload, then run the miner
- • Step 2: review and edit everything it found before creating the story
- • Requires an API key or the free LLM opt-in; can take a few minutes on longer manuscripts
Fork a Universe
Start from a public worldbuilding template in Universes. Forking pre-populates your story with characters, locations, lore, organizations, and events from that world.
Inside a Story
Every story has a left panel with two types of content:
Story Elements
Characters
Profile, dialogue style, relationships
Locations
Settings, atmosphere, descriptions
Lore
World-building, history, mythology
Organizations
Groups, factions, institutions
Items
Objects, weapons, tools, artifacts
Events
Plot points, timelines, consequences
Species
Races, creatures, and their traits
Notes
Free-form notes for anything else
Story Rules
Standing instructions Ash always follows for this story
Content
Chapters
Your story text — rich text editor with AI tools
@-reference system
Type @ inside any text field to reference a character, location, or item by name. Ash reads those referenced elements during generation to maintain continuity.
Word Count Tracking
- • Per-story total shown on The Desk cards
- • Per-chapter word count
- • Target word count progress
- • Story stats: Total / Owned / Shared
- • Last-edited date on each card
Story Home: Manage & World at a Glance
Every story has a home page with a Manage card and a World at a Glance card.
Manage
- • Story settings — genre, tense, language, mood, time period, tone, POV, and banned words
- • Delete story — permanently remove the story
- • To rename a story, edit the title inline at the top of the page
World at a Glance
Live counts of every world element — characters, species, locations, items, lore, organizations, and timeline events — linking straight to that section of the World tab.
Export Options
TXT
Plain text chapters — universally compatible, smallest file size
DOCX
Chapters as Microsoft Word, manuscript formatting preserved
ZIP
Every chapter plus every story element, organized in folders
Universes
Universes are public worldbuilding collections available at /universes. Each universe contains pre-built story elements (characters, locations, lore, organizations, items, events) for a specific fictional world.
Forking a universe
- • Browse by genre (Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Cyberpunk, Romance...)
- • Click any universe to see its elements
- • Fork to create a new story pre-loaded with that world
- • All elements are yours to edit after forking
Creating a universe
- • Click New Universe to create your own
- • Add elements exactly like a story
- • Publish it publicly for others to fork
- • Request a universe via the submission form