writer

A VS Code plugin to aid the process of writing novels.

Current process — keep all of it

• Write in markdown
• Store edits in GitHub
• Make edits and compare to previous versions using diffs

VS Code already offers all of this. None of it gets replaced.

What's missing

1. Story flow graph

Visualize the story flow as a graph. Currently generated as an SVG by Claude Code, which is very clunky. Want to be able to visualize the graph properly — zoom in and out on certain plots, etc.

2. Fact database

Keep the facts in a database:

• Character names
• Where they live
• Key locations and their descriptions
• Key events

3. Virtual reviewer

Check the manuscript against a set of rules:

• Are certain characters not showing up and disappearing?
• Are we not perspective hopping too much?
• Are we not mixing the timeline?
• Are we not introducing events out of nowhere?
• Grammar review (sort of like a linter)

These are large features. They may deserve multiple plugins — something like GitKraken, a suite of tools for writers.

4. Story editor

It should be easy to identify elements of the story to rewrite. Removing a paragraph should bring up a list of connected paragraphs that may require rewriting.

Undo/redo should be supported.

Not sure yet what the UI/UX for this should look and feel like. This should go beyond editing words, and focus on editing concepts.

Examples of such edits:

• throwing out a plot that is irrelevant
• changing the communication style of a character
• injecting a new fact and identifying which story parts it should affect

Building and testing

1. Build it for myself first and test it extensively while writing. I write a lot of stories — some long (>50k words), some short (~5k words).
2. The entire thing thoroughly tested.
3. Experiment with running local language models (max 32 GB RAM on a Mac), multiplexed and finetuned to perform very specific tasks.
4. Expose the plugin immediately for myself — install it and keep updating it in VS Code on my laptop.