Bringing your work over

What you can upload

The wizard accepts these formats:

• Word documents (.docx)
• Plain text and Markdown (.txt, .md)
• Rich text (.rtf)
• XML (.xml)
• EPUB ebooks (.epub)
• CSV files (great for character or place lists)

Upload individual files — Pendraic doesn’t accept whole folders, but you can drop as many files as you want into the same import batch. The more you bring in one batch (a draft plus a character sheet plus a worldbuilding doc, for example), the better Pendraic can connect what it finds.

PDFs, images, and Excel spreadsheets aren’t supported. PDF parsing was too unreliable to ship; for an Excel sheet, export it as CSV first.

Layering in supplemental content after the first analysis

Once the wizard finishes the first pass, you can keep adding files to the same import batch before you accept and promote. Drop in a character bible, a list of place descriptions, lore entries — whatever you already have. Pendraic re-reads the new files and merges them with what the first pass found, enriching existing Story Index and World Index entries by matching names. A character the manuscript already detected as “Brian” will pick up the surname, age, and description from your supplemental notes automatically.

What happens after you upload

The wizard runs through seven steps. You don’t have to watch each one; the progress bar tells you where it’s at.

1. Reading. Each file gets unpacked and the text extracted. The original file stays in storage forever as your audit trail.
2. Finding the structure. We split your text into paragraphs and headings and lists, then group them into meaningful chunks: a chapter here, a character sheet there, a magic-system page over there.
3. Sorting what’s what. Each chunk gets labeled. Manuscript prose? Character bio? Worldbuilding entry? An ambiguous chunk gets flagged for you to look at instead of guessed at.
4. Pulling out the pieces. Chapter titles, scene boundaries, character names and their aliases, world rules. We even guess the POV character of each scene by looking at who’s mentioned most in dialogue.
5. Putting it together. We assemble a draft project: chapters, scenes, characters, world entries, with everything cross-referenced.
6. Showing you.The review studio opens with everything we found. You approve what looks right, reject what doesn’t, and skip anything you’re not sure about.
7. Importing.Once you’re happy, click “Import approved into project.” A real project + chapters + scenes show up in your Bookshelf.

What if my upload is messy?

That’s the normal case. Most writers have a folder that contains a half-finished draft + outdated character sheets + a world bible from a previous tool + scribbled revision notes. The wizard handles this:

• Each chunk is rated for confidence. Things we’re sure about (a clearly-titled chapter, a labeled character sheet) come through with green confidence pills. Things we’re not (an ambiguous note that could be either a scene fragment or a worldbuilding entry) get amber or red pills and stay as “pending” until you decide.
• Series-level material gets flagged separately from single-book material. If you upload a series index, we won’t jam it into book one — you can promote it to the series scope.
• Stray notes, TODOs, and revision comments end up in a Notes bucket so they don’t pollute your manuscript tree. You can promote them or skip them.

Importing a multi-book file

The import wizard is built around the assumption that one upload session produces one project. If you have several books from a series compiled into a single docx, txt, or markdown file, the wizard will treat the whole upload as a single very long manuscript, which is almost never what you want. Two cleaner paths:

• Split the file before you upload.One file per book, one import session per book. After each promotion the wizard remembers the series you’re building under, so you can attach each new book to the same series from the project metadata dialog.
• Or upload the compiled file with only book one’s structure. Open the manuscript in Word, copy out everything past the end of book one, save that as a separate file, and import each in turn. The series and character relationships carry across because the Story Index lives at series scope.

Once every book is imported, attach them to the same series from the bookshelf. The Story Index entries you already promoted will be visible across all books in the series without re-importing.

Privacy

Your uploaded files are stored privately and tied to your account. Pendraic doesn’t train AI on them, and we don’t sell or share them with anyone. The original files stay forever as the audit trail so you can always trace a chapter back to where it came from.