Your manuscript. Your world. Your machine.
The writing studio built for authors who build worlds.
You open the app. Your manuscript is there, exactly where you left it. The world-bible is a sidebar click away. The timeline remembers every hour of every day you mapped. Thirty-eight publisher formatting profiles are waiting for submission day. Nothing lives in someone else's cloud.
Foliantica is a local-first, all-in-one writing studio — manuscript editor, codex, timeline, corkboard, analytics, and submission tracker in a single desktop app. Offline by default. No subscriptions. No accounts. No telemetry. Your words stay yours.
- 🔒 Fully offline. Nothing leaves your machine without your say-so.
- 🌍 World-builder native. Codex, relations graph, configurable time system, and timeline — built in, not bolted on.
- 📤 Submission-ready. One click generates manuscripts formatted for 38+ publishers and agents, downloaded as a ZIP.
- ☁️ Optional sync. Point the data folder at Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive — that's all it takes.
- 💬 A second opinion when everyone else is busy. Chat about your plot, ask if a scene lands, brainstorm a name — the AI knows your characters and your world, but the story is still yours to write.
- 👥 Co-work. Invite a writing partner, editor, or student over the local network or internet — they get their own role, their own access level, and their comments appear live in your editor.
- 🔎 Prose checker. Structural feedback on your writing: sentence variety, dialogue ratio, passive voice, weasel words, and more — powered by Vale with multilingual fiction rule sets.
Available as a standalone desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux) or run directly from source.
Download the latest installer from Releases and run it — no Node.js or Python required.
Cloud sync: Go to Settings → Data Folder, point Foliantica at any folder inside Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive. Foliantica can migrate your existing data to the new location in one click.
Double-click LaunchFoliantica.bat (Windows) — it starts the backend, frontend, and the Docker sidecars (LanguageTool + Pandoc) in one step.
.\LaunchFoliantica.batThen open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.
Requires Node.js 20+, Python 3.11+, uv, and Docker Desktop (for grammar check and PDF/EPUB/DOCX export).
.\build.ps1 # Windows
./build.sh # macOS / LinuxRequires Node.js 20+, Python 3.11+, uv, and Docker Desktop. Produces an installer in dist/.
- 4-level hierarchy: Project → Act → Chapter → Scene
- Drag-and-drop reordering at every level; hover any divider and click + to insert a scene between existing ones
- Double-click any act or chapter title to rename inline; scene titles auto-generated from content when left blank
- Debounced autosave (1 s) + periodic interval save; localStorage fallback when the backend is unreachable
- Word count in the status bar; per-scene counts persist to the database
- Slash commands (
/) — headings, lists, blockquote, task list, table, divider, images, currency/item nodes, AI nodes, timeline events, and more - Rich formatting toolbar — appears on text selection with bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, headings, lists, blockquote, and text alignment
- Smart typography — curly quotes, en/em dashes, and ellipses applied automatically as you type
- Tables (
/table), task lists (/tasklist), embedded images - Spellcheck with native dictionary suggestions — right-click any underlined word to correct or add it to your personal dictionary; language follows the project's book metadata
- Typewriter mode — cursor stays pinned at a configurable vertical offset as you write
- Focus mode — dims everything outside the active paragraph
- Paragraph numbers — optional markers at a configurable interval
- Find & Replace — Ctrl+F / Cmd+F with match highlighting and replace
- Ghost text — AI-powered inline autocomplete suggestions drawn from your own prose style
- Read view — flowing, story-typography prose per chapter or per act
- Per-scene checklist — click the clipboard icon next to any scene name in the sidebar
- Add, check off, edit inline (double-click), or bulk-clear completed tasks
- Progress bar fills as tasks are ticked; a green badge replaces the count when all are done
- Automatic snapshots every 5 minutes while a scene is open (only when content changed)
- Scene-leave snapshot on navigation; pre-restore snapshot before any restore
- SHA-256 deduplication — identical content never stored twice
- Retention: up to 30 versions per scene; oldest pruned after 30 days
- History sidebar — relative timestamps, inline preview, one-click restore with confirmation
- Visual scene-card view across acts and chapters
- Subplot columns — drag scenes into parallel plot threads; main plot always leftmost
- Stack groups — scenes sharing a stack value move as one unit
- Cards show synopsis, word count, POV character, and beat label
- Free-canvas mode with React Flow positions
- Invite a guest with a named invitation link — share it over the network or open a Cloudflare Tunnel for internet access (no port-forwarding required)
- QR code in Settings → Co-work for easy mobile join
- Role-based access modes: Read-only, Appearance-only, Assigned scenes, Editor, and full access
- Editor role — full write access to assigned scenes; saves go directly to the author's database
- Student mode — restrict a guest to specific scenes; teacher sees all sessions in a dashboard
- Inline comments — guests (and the author) highlight any passage and leave a threaded note; comments appear as coloured overlays in the editor
- Comment categories — tag annotations as Question, Suggestion, Correction, or Praise; filter by category with the pill bar
- Live presence — avatars appear in the toolbar when a guest is viewing the same scene
- Scene soft-locks — a gentle indicator when two people are editing the same scene at the same time
- Real-time push — edits, presence, and comments sync via WebSocket; no polling
- Session management — see all active guests, kick a session, revoke an invitation at any time
- Structural analysis at a glance: sentence length variance, average sentence length, dialogue ratio, passive-voice rate, and weasel-word density — all shown in the Vale panel
- Vale-powered style rules — a curated fiction rule set covering:
- Passive voice — flags passive constructions in prose
- Weasel words — hedging language that weakens sentences
- Buzzwords — clichéd phrases common in genre fiction
- Nominal style — verb-turned-nouns that slow pacing
- Redundancy — pleonastic phrases (e.g. "end result", "past history")
- Adverbs (German: adverbien) — overused adverbs
- Multilingual — rule sets for English, German, Dutch, Italian, and Polish
- Per-entry configuration — open any rule's entry list, enable/disable individual tokens, or add your own custom entries
- Custom rules — write your own regex-based existence or substitution rules in the Custom section
- Jump-to — click any Vale finding to jump to the exact occurrence in the editor (handles repeated phrases and inflected forms)
- Runs entirely on your machine via the Vale Docker sidecar; your prose never leaves
- Scene-level breakdown — word count, scene type, average sentence length, dialogue ratio
- Chapter-level stats — Flesch readability score, Kincaid grade level, scene type distribution
- Project totals — total word count, overall scene type chart
- Writing log — daily word counts and streaks; calendar heat-map style view
- Entry types: Character, Location, Item, Lore, Custom
- Fields: name, aliases, description, notes, colour tag, groups, species / subtype, tags
- Main character flag — protagonists starred (★) in dropdowns and centred in the relations graph
- Character inventory — custom currencies and possessions (linked items, quantity, notes)
- Inline Codex highlighting — any word matching an entry name or alias gets a coloured underline; click to open the entry
- List view and Grid view — sortable by name, type, group, colour, or tags
- Filters — type, group, species, subtype, tags — multi-select, combine freely
- Multi-select + bulk-edit — change type, subtype/species, add shared tags/relations, or delete in one action
- Typed relations between entries (Friend, Enemy, Family, Leads, Possession, custom…)
- Share mode per entry — control which linked projects can read it
- Import from CSV, JSON, or a folder of
.mdfiles - Mention stats — see which scenes reference each codex entry and how often
- Link a project to an existing world-bible — both projects share the same codex entries in real time
- Or copy the codex to start an independent fork
- Series view — group projects by series, set order index, role labels (Prequel, Book 1…), and shared cover images
- Shared projects share a combined timeline spanning all their scenes
- SVG radial mindmap — one entry at centre, linked entries on the inner ring, second-degree connections on the outer ring
- Depth slider (1–3) — control relationship hops
- Click any node to re-centre; right-click for Edit Entry / Remove Relation
- Solid lines = explicit relations; dashed lines = inline
[rel:]tags detected in scene prose
- Per-project configurable time units — any combination of Age, Year, Season, Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Second; rename any unit to fit your world
- Custom count-per-parent (e.g. 13 months/year) and named values (e.g. custom month or season names)
- Day/Night cycle dial — set day length, night start, and night duration; visualised as a purple arc on the SVG clock
- Per-scene Time panel — inputs for each enabled unit with a live preview badge and ☀ / 🌙 label
- Horizontal grid — rows are scenes, columns are time points
- Column headers show formatted in-world time with ☀ / 🌙 badge; click a cell to jump to that scene
- Timeline tracks — parallel story threads (e.g. "Parallel world", "Backstory") with custom colour and time range
- Timeline events — free-standing named events at any time point, linked to a track; insert directly from the editor with
/timeline - Shared-codex projects display a combined multi-project timeline
- Clip URLs (auto-fetches title, description, and preview image), text notes, images, and PDFs
- Drag-and-drop or Ctrl+V paste to attach an image to any clip — works even with a text field focused
- PDF upload — attach a document to a clip and preview it inline (canvas-based, works in Electron and browser)
- Image lightbox — click the expand button on hover to view the full image; press Esc to close
- Cards displayed in a 3:4 portrait grid; edit dialog shows text fields alongside a media preview
- Tag freely; filter by tag in the sidebar
- Link any clip to a specific scene or codex entry
- Open the original URL in one click
- Snippets, Ideas, and Archive tabs built in; add any number of custom tabs
- Lightweight note cards with category labels and drag-to-reorder
- Great for cut prose, worldbuilding scraps, and anything that doesn't belong in a scene yet
- Sidebar panel — Continue, Rewrite, Brainstorm, Ask, Custom modes
/kiinline AI node — insert a generation block directly into the prose:- Choose a prompt (Story Generation, Lector Review, Codex Distillation, or any custom prompt)
- Inject codex entries and extra scenes as context
- Set a word count target
- Auto-synopsis — one-click scene synopsis generation from the scene toolbar
- Streams output from any OpenRouter model
- Per-operation model overrides — dedicate a model to synopsis, codex distillation, and scene chat independently of the global default
- Project language propagates to all AI prompts automatically (e.g. writes in German when
language: "de")
- Built-in prompts: Story Generation, Lector Review, Codex Entry Distillation
- Custom prompts — name, system instruction, user template, and word count target
- Template placeholders:
{{SCENE_CONTENT}},{{CODEX_ENTRIES}},{{USER_PROMPT}},{{LANGUAGE}},{{WORD_COUNT}},{{ENTRY_TYPE}} - Manage all prompts in Settings → AI Prompts; revert built-ins to factory defaults any time
- Powered by LanguageTool (self-hosted via Docker — your text never leaves your machine)
- Colour-coded highlighting by category: grammar, style, spelling, punctuation
- Click any issue to jump to the exact occurrence in the editor (handles repeated phrases correctly)
- One-click Apply suggestion to accept a fix; 3-minute timeout with a patience message while the check runs
- Supported languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, and more
- Markdown — clean
.mdoutput - LaTeX —
\chapter/\sectionstructure, proper escaping, configurable font/size/margins/drop-caps - PDF — via Pandoc (Docker); full LaTeX pipeline with custom typography
- EPUB — via Pandoc; configurable fonts, colours, page margin
- DOCX — Word document via Pandoc; reference-doc font/spacing pipeline
- Scene selection, heading inclusion, and full typography (font, size, line spacing, indent, alignment, margins, page numbers, drop caps) configurable per export
- Saved profiles — star any set of settings as a named preset (built-in: Classic Novel, Manuscript, Modern; save your own)
- EPUB Style export — standalone CSS + optional cover image for custom EPUB toolchains
- 38 publisher / agent formatting profiles across 9 categories:
- Standard Formats (SMF TNR, SMF Courier)
- US Trade (Berkley / PRH)
- UK Publishers (Pan Macmillan, Hachette, Bloomsbury)
- Literary Agencies (Curtis Brown UK/AU, Janklow & Nesbit, Writers House)
- Genre Imprints (Tor UK, Soho Crime, Harlequin)
- Self-Publishing (Amazon KDP, Draft2Digital)
- German Publishers (Rowohlt, S. Fischer, Suhrkamp, Hanser, Piper, Droemer Knaur, Bastei Lübbe, Aufbau, Ullstein, dtv)
- French Publishers (Gallimard, Seuil, Flammarion, Albin Michel, Actes Sud, Bragelonne, L'Atalante)
- Spanish Publishers (Planeta, Alfaguara, Anagrama, Tusquets, Siruela, Ediciones Urano, Roca Editorial)
- Publisher Pack mode in the export dialog — tick any combination of publishers, click Export Pack, and download a ZIP of all manuscripts named
Publisher_Title.ext - Each profile shows its format badge (DOCX / EPUB / PDF), word count range, Open / Agented status, and a link to the publisher's submission guidelines
- Collapsible category groups with select-all toggles; collapse-all / expand-all shortcut
- Query Tracker — log every agent and publisher query: date sent, response deadline, submission type, status (Queried → Partial → Full → Offer / Pass), and notes
- Status overview strip showing live counts and a pipeline progress bar
| Layer | Tech |
|---|---|
| Desktop | Electron 42, electron-builder |
| Frontend | Next.js 14, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, shadcn/ui |
| Editor | TipTap v3 — Typography, Underline, TextAlign, TaskList, Table + custom extensions |
| State | Zustand + TanStack Query v5 |
| Backend | FastAPI, SQLAlchemy 2.0, PostgreSQL 17 / SQLite (WAL) |
| AI | OpenRouter (any model, proxied via backend) |
| Export | Markdown, LaTeX, PDF / EPUB / DOCX via Pandoc (Docker sidecar) |
| Style check | Vale (Docker sidecar) — multilingual fiction rule sets |
| Co-work | WebSocket event push, JWT guest auth, Cloudflare Tunnel |
- OpenRouter API key — stored server-side, never sent to the browser
- AI models — global default; separate overrides for chat, synopsis, and codex distillation; per-model enable/disable for
/ki - Themes — Dark, Light, and themed variants
- Editor — paragraph numbers, typewriter mode and offset, session timer
- Grammar Check — enable, set LanguageTool service URL and active languages
- Prose / Vale — enable Vale style check, set service URL, manage rule sets and custom rules
- Co-work — enable guest access, create named invitations, set access modes, open a Cloudflare Tunnel for internet access
- PDF/EPUB/DOCX Export — enable Pandoc service and set its URL
- Data folder — point to Dropbox / Drive / OneDrive for cross-device sync; migrate existing data in one click
- AI Prompts — edit, create, delete, revert built-ins to factory defaults
- Codex highlight — toggle the coloured underline for codex entry names in the editor
| Tip | How |
|---|---|
| Rename an act or chapter | Double-click its title in the sidebar |
| Insert a scene between two scenes | Hover the divider → click + |
| Reorder anything | Grab the ⠿ drag handle on hover |
| Plan your scene | Click the 📋 icon next to its name in the sidebar |
| Open a codex entry from the editor | Click the coloured underline under any highlighted word |
| Fix a spelling error | Right-click the underlined word → pick a suggestion |
| Add a word to the dictionary | Right-click → Add to dictionary |
| Insert a table | Type /table in the editor |
| Insert a task list | Type /tasklist in the editor |
| Smart quotes & em-dashes | Just type — they're applied automatically |
| Format selected text | Select text → bubble toolbar |
| Add an in-world event to the timeline | Type /timeline in the editor |
| Jump to a scene from the timeline | Click the cell |
| Clear a scene's time stamp | Time panel → Clear |
| Bulk-edit codex entries | Check multiple entries → floating action bar |
| Sort codex by tags | List view → click the Tags column header |
| Add custom month/season names | Time System → unit row → Custom names |
| Export a single manuscript | Sidebar → Export → Single |
| Export to multiple publishers at once | Sidebar → Export → Publisher Pack |
| Track an agent query | Sidebar overflow → Query Tracker |
| Mark a protagonist | Codex entry → Main character checkbox |
| Share a world bible across projects | New Project → Share codex |
| Track character possessions | Codex entry (character) → Inventory tab |
| Browse scene snapshots | Scene editor → History button |
| Restore an older version | History sidebar → hover a version → ↺ |
| Generate text inline with AI | Type /ki, configure the node, click Generate |
| Set the language for AI output | Project → Book Metadata → Language field (e.g. de) |
| Clip a research URL | Research tab → paste URL → Enter |
| Attach an image to a clip | Drag onto the card, or Ctrl+V while hovering |
| Attach a PDF to a clip | Open the clip → PDF upload button |
| Preview an attached image full-size | Hover the image → click ↗ |
| Preview an attached PDF | Click the PDF button on the card |
| Move cut prose to Fragments | Fragments tab → Snippets or Archive |
| Invite a co-worker | Settings → Co-work → New Invitation |
| Share via internet (no port-forwarding) | Settings → Co-work → Open Cloudflare Tunnel |
| Leave a comment on a passage | Select text → speech-bubble icon → type comment |
| Filter comments by category | Comment bar → pick a category pill |
| Run prose / style check | Vale panel → Run Style Check |
| Jump to a Vale finding in the editor | Click the finding in the Vale panel |
| Add your own style rule entry | Vale panel → rule → Configure → Add entry |
| Toggle codex highlight underlines | Settings → Editor → Codex highlight |
foliantica/
├── electron/ # Electron main process + splash screen
│ └── assets/ # App icons (ico, icns, png)
├── api/ # FastAPI backend
│ ├── routers/ # projects, scenes, codex, time, graph, ai,
│ │ # settings, export, imports, analytics,
│ │ # submissions, research, fragments, grammar,
│ │ # prose, vale, collab, comments, sync,
│ │ # scene_commands, achievements
│ ├── services/ # Tag parsing, AI streaming, export renderers
│ ├── models.py # SQLAlchemy ORM models
│ ├── schemas.py # Pydantic request/response schemas
│ └── database.py # Engine, session, migration helpers, publisher seed data
├── docker/
│ └── pandoc/ # Pandoc + LaTeX sidecar (PDF/EPUB/DOCX export)
└── web/ # Next.js 14 frontend
└── src/
├── app/ # App Router pages
│ # (editor, codex, timeline, corkboard, analytics,
│ # research, fragments, queries, settings…)
├── components/ # Editor, Codex, AI panel, Export dialog,
│ # Corkboard, Analytics, Research, Fragments,
│ # Query Tracker, Version History, Scene Plan
├── store/ # Zustand UI store + TanStack Query hooks
└── types/ # Shared TypeScript interfaces
