Beat Map

Beats are the structural waypoints in your manuscript, inciting incident, midpoint, climax, etc. The Beat Map surfaces them as a list anchored to specific scenes, so the AI knows where you are on the spine when it generates.

Where beats come from

When you pick an outline template at project creation, Pendraic seeds an Engine row plus a beat scaffold. The beats start unanchored, you peg them to scenes as you draft.

Adding a beat

Two paths:

From the Beat Map panel. Open the right rail in Beat mode; click + Add beat to this scene to insert a beat anchored to the active scene at the next free ordinal.
From the editor toolbar. Discovery and Heavy presets show a Workflow icon in the prose toolbar , click it to summon a beat against the active scene without leaving Compose.

Anchoring scenes to beats

Each beat carries an optional anchor_scene_id pointing at the scene that delivers it. The Beat Map panel shows the previous, current, and next beat relative to the active scene, your structural neighborhood at a glance.

Changing templates

The right-rail Plan tab has a Change template button. Pick a new template and choose append (safe, keeps existing beats and adds the new template's beats at the tail) or replace (destructive, wipes existing beats and seeds the new template fresh). Replace breaks scene anchors; you'll need to re-peg from the Beat Map.