01
why it came alive
Every writing tool we tried wanted the story to be one shape: a manuscript, a screenplay, a doc. Attractor needed all of them at once. There were briefings, branching scenes, and beats that had to become gameplay. So we stopped forcing the draft into someone else's tool and built a place where it could be whatever it needed to be.
02
what it became
Nine editors, each built for its format: screenplay, prose, poetry, comics, interactive fiction, and more. A beat board for when the story is still loose parts. A vault of plain markdown. It all stays on your machine: no account, no connection. Bring your own key and there's an AI side panel; host the stack yourself and you can write with someone else. Attractor's script was the first story on the shelf.
// what it answers
Writing Attractor in it.
Captures from the desktop app, open on the script and gameplay design of Attractor: Zero. Open any one to look closer.
- Q-01
where does the writing happen?
On a page, and nowhere else. Every format writes on sheets on a desk, with tools tucked into the margin. This is the close of Attractor: Zero’s opening briefing, and the link that carries the player into the base.
- Q-02
how does the story branch?
The graph lays out every passage and the links between them, so you can trace any route, see which passages are hubs, and spot the ones nothing reaches.
- Q-03
does it actually play?
Play runs the story as written. Variables, conditions and assignments execute, with a variable watch and an execution history beside the text, so you test the branching while you write it.
- Q-04
where do the rules live?
Next to the story. Attractor’s gameplay design is written in the TTRPG editor: rule blocks, stat templates and tables in one document. These are the rules the game is held to.
// nine editors
Nine kinds of writing. One page.
Each format gets an editor built around its own conventions, and all of them share one page: sheets on a desk, a tool rail in the margin, a quiet save mark. Moving from a screenplay to a poem to your lore notes feels like one tool, not nine bolted together.
- 01
screenplay
Scene, action, character and dialogue elements with scene and character autocomplete, on US-Letter pages so a page still reads as about a minute.
FDX · PDF · imports FDX - 02
prose
Paragraphs, dialogue, headings and scene breaks on A4 manuscript sheets.
EPUB · DOCX · PDF - 03
memoir
Runs on the prose surface and tooling. Its own chronology, sources and fact-check workflow are still to come.
EPUB · DOCX · PDF - 04
poetry
Line and stanza editing with section labels, and a syllable count you can switch on.
PDF · DOCX · TXT - 05
lyrics
Song sections with chord rows sitting above the words.
ChordPro, in and out - 06
comic
Panels, characters, balloons, captions and SFX in comic-script form, ready to hand to an artist.
comic-script PDF · DOCX - 07
interactive fiction
Twine-style passages with typed variables and conditions, a Play mode that runs them, and diagnostics for broken links, dead ends and passages nothing reaches.
SugarCube Twee, round-trip - 08
ttrpg
Prose, stat blocks, rules and random tables in one document.
MD · TXT - 09
vault
Plain markdown in a real folder: live preview, [[wikilinks]], backlinks, tags, a note graph and attachments.
plain .md · desktop only
Every project except a vault also exports as a lossless .iw file. The core of each editor ships today; the deeper production tools are being built format by format.
// the assistant
An assistant that works in the draft, on your terms.
The AI is one feature, not the premise. Every editor has a chat side panel. You bring the key, and it talks to your provider directly.
- 01your key
Any provider you like.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint: Ollama, LM Studio, OpenRouter, your own proxy. On desktop the key lives in your OS keychain and requests go straight from your machine.
- 02your say
Nothing changes without you.
The assistant can create, read, rewrite and delete scenes, add beats and search your vault. Every destructive call waits for your confirmation, and every change can be undone.
- 03your tools
Open to other agents too.
On desktop the same tools are served as a local MCP server, so Claude Code or Claude Desktop can read, search and edit your scenes, beats and notes behind the same approval and undo.
// staying yours
Your files, on your machine.
No account, no network. Collaboration and sync are a second half you opt into, never a gate you pass through.
The desktop app runs fully offline. Signing in is an optional link for sync, never a login wall.
Vault notes are real .md files. Version the folder with git or edit it in vim; a filesystem watcher brings outside edits straight in.
Any other project exports as a lossless .iw file, alongside the PDF, FDX, EPUB, ChordPro and Twee you hand to other people.
Live co-editing, comments, presence and cross-device sync come from a server stack in the same repository. Run it yourself, or skip it.
# where everything lives, on linux
~/.config/com.inkwell.app/inkwell.db projects · beat boards · analytics
<the folder you picked>/**/*.md vault notes and attachments
your OS keychain provider keys, never sent by inkwell
03
the salvage trail
What this project took from the pile, and what it put back.
← borrowed from the yard
Our rule that useful work stays ownable and reusable. Here it became a hard line: your files, on your machine.
left behind for the yard →
A working home for its story and gameplay narrative — a place to write through what happens in the world and how the player becomes part of it.
A writing tool we actually write in, with local files at the centre and hosting kept optional.
where it stands · now
Pre-1.0, and we use it day to day on desktop. Windows and Linux builds are published; macOS builds exist but are ad-hoc signed, so Gatekeeper complains on first launch. The hosted stack works, but we're still tightening it before calling it launched.
05