Writer's Crucible

Writer's Crucible is a Visual Studio Code extension designed to help writers maintain momentum by tracking daily writing challenges directly within the editor. It's built on the principle that consistent, measurable progress is the key to completing large writing projects.

Check the extension's marketplace page : Writer's Crucible on Visual Studio Marketplace

This extension lives in your status bar, providing at-a-glance feedback on your progress without interrupting your workflow.

Main Features

• Instantaneous Input Detection: The extension automatically detects instantaneous character input, Auto Complete, Copilot suggestions and pastes. They are counted up to a specified number character, ensuring that your typed characters count higher towards your daily goal. You can configure the maximum number of characters tracked per input operation (default: 50) set to zero to exclude instantaneous input from your daily goal.
• Reset Today's Count: Added a command to reset only the current day's progress to zero, perfect for fixing copy-paste errors without affecting your history.
• Graphical Statistics: A new command opens a dedicated panel to visualize your writing progress with beautiful charts, showing daily output and cumulative growth over time.
• Per-Project Tracking: The extension automatically tracks your progress separately for each project folder (workspace).
• Configurable File Types: You can tell the extension exactly which file types to track via your VS Code settings.

The Writer's Crucible Philosophy

This extension is built on a specific methodology designed for the realities of non-fiction writing.

Why Characters, Not Words?

While word count is a common metric, character count offers several advantages for non-fiction authors, researchers, and technical writers:

1. Precision: There's no ambiguity. "Socio-economic" is one word, but it's 15 characters of effort. "A" and "the" are words, but they represent minimal progress. Characters measure the literal volume of text you produce.
2. Values All Work: Non-fiction writing isn't just prose. It involves lists, data, citations, code snippets, and structured notes. A character count values all of these tangible contributions to your final manuscript.
3. Encourages Conciseness: Thinking in characters can subtly encourage more deliberate and concise language, a hallmark of strong non-fiction.

Choosing Your Challenge

Each challenge level is designed for a specific workload and goal. Find the one that matches your current situation.

1. The Micro-Sprint (500 Chars/Day)

• Workload: A few minutes of focused effort. Equivalent to writing 1-2 solid paragraphs or a few detailed bullet points.
• Best For:
  • Writers overcoming a block or building a new habit.
  • Extremely busy individuals who can only spare 15-20 minutes.
  • The "zero day" killer—a low bar to ensure you write something every day.
• Expected Monthly Output: ~15,000 characters (~2,500 words). Enough for a solid blog post or the initial draft of a short article.

2. The Standard Kilo-Challenge (1,000 Chars/Day)

• Workload: A manageable daily session of 20-40 minutes. Equivalent to writing 3-4 paragraphs.
• Best For:
  • The average writer looking to make consistent, steady progress on a long-term project.
  • Balancing a day job with a writing project (e.g., a book or thesis).
• Expected Monthly Output: ~30,000 characters (~4,500-5,000 words). The length of a substantial book chapter, a feature article, or a detailed report section. This is the sweet spot for sustainable output.

3. The Marathoner's Pace (2,000 Chars/Day)

• Workload: A significant, dedicated writing session of about an hour.
• Best For:
  • Writers who are on a deadline.
  • Academics in a dedicated "writing phase" for a paper.
  • Full-time writers or those with a clear, protected block of writing time each day.
• Expected Monthly Output: ~60,000 characters (~9,000-10,000 words). Enough to make serious headway on a manuscript or complete a major paper.

4. The 3K Crucible (3,000 Chars/Day)

• Workload: A heavy-duty, professional-grade session of 1.5-2+ hours. This level also values non-prose work like revision and citation.
• Best For:
  • Authors in the final push to finish a book draft.
  • PhD candidates writing their dissertation against a deadline.
  • Anyone whose primary job for a set period is to produce a large volume of text.
• Expected Monthly Output: ~90,000+ characters (~13,500+ words). This is professional-level output that can produce a significant portion of a manuscript in a short time.

non-fiction specific

writers-crucible.addRevisionTime

• What it does: When you run this command, it instantly adds 1,000 characters to your daily goal.
• Why it exists: Heavy revision and deep editing are mentally taxing and crucial for a high-quality manuscript. You might spend 45 minutes intensely rewriting a single paragraph, resulting in a net loss of characters but a massive gain in quality. This command provides a way to get "credit" for that focused editing work, ensuring you can still meet your daily goal even on days dedicated to revision rather than drafting.

writers-crucible.addCitation

• What it does: This command adds 50 characters to your daily goal each time you run it.
• Why it exists: Creating and formatting citations, references, and bibliographies is a time-consuming but necessary part of non-fiction and academic writing. This work produces very few characters relative to the effort involved. This command allows you to acknowledge the effort of accurately citing a source, ensuring that this critical but low-character task contributes to your daily progress.

writers-crucible.addFigure

• What it does: Adds 50 characters to your daily goal for adding an existing figure, chart, or visual element to your document.
• Why it exists: Inserting figures, charts, diagrams, and other visual elements requires effort in selection, positioning, and captioning. This command acknowledges the time spent enhancing your document with visual content.

writers-crucible.createNewFigure

• What it does: Adds 200 characters to your daily goal for creating a brand new figure, chart, or diagram.
• Why it exists: Creating original visuals (graphs, charts, diagrams, illustrations) is time-intensive work that contributes significantly to your manuscript but produces minimal character count. This substantial bonus reflects the creative and analytical effort involved in developing new visual content.

writers-crucible.addExternalText

• What it does: Allows you to paste or enter text from external sources, automatically inserting it at your cursor position while counting all characters toward your daily goal.
• Why it exists: When incorporating research notes, quotes, or content from other editors, you deserve full credit for the integration work. This command inserts the text directly into your document and properly accounts for all characters without double-counting limitations.

Features

• Status Bar Progress: Your daily character count and goal are always visible.
• Multiple Challenge Levels: Choose the challenge that fits your schedule and goals.
• Universal Character Tracking: Automatically counts characters from all input methods:
  • Manual typing
  • Copy/paste operations (ignored to prevent cheating)
  • GitHub Copilot completions (both inline and dropdown)
  • All other text insertions
• Intelligent Input Detection: Distinguishes between different types of text input and applies appropriate tracking rules.
• Daily Reset: Your progress automatically resets to zero each day, and the previous day's work is saved to your project's history.
• Enhanced Content Creation Commands:
  • Figure Management: Add points for inserting existing figures (50 chars) or creating new ones (200 chars)
  • External Text Integration: Import and insert text from other sources with full character credit
  • Academic Writing Support: Bonus points for citations and revision work
• Crucible-Specific Commands: For the "3K Crucible" challenge, add character bonuses for revision and citation work.
• Persistent, Scoped State: Your challenge and progress are saved independently for each project.

How to Use

1. (First Time) Configure Settings (Optional):

   • Go to File > Preferences > Settings (or Code > Settings > Settings on Mac).
   • Search for "Writer's Crucible".
   • Tracked File Types: Add the language IDs you want to track (e.g., latex, restructuredtext). The defaults are markdown and plaintext.
   • Max Tracked Characters: Set the maximum characters tracked per input operation (default: 50). This prevents large paste operations from inflating your count while allowing most Copilot completions to be tracked.
   • Undo Grace Period: Adjust how long deletions can "undo" recent character additions (default: 30 seconds).

2. Start a Challenge:

   • Open a project folder.
   • Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P or Cmd+Shift+P) and run Writer's Crucible: Start or Change Writing Challenge.
   • Select your desired challenge from the list. This challenge will be set only for the current project.

3. Write!

   • Open a file of a tracked type.
   • As you type, use Copilot completions, or write manually, you will see your character count increase in the status bar.

4. View Statistics:

   • For Visual Charts: Run Writer's Crucible: Visualize Project Statistics from the Command Palette. A new tab will open with charts of your progress.
   • For Text Stats: Click the Writer's Crucible item in the status bar or run Writer's Crucible: Show Project Statistics (Text).

5. Reset Your Data:

   • To reset all data for the current project only, run Writer's Crucible: Reset Project Challenge Data from the Command Palette.