Outline tree
The left-column outline shows your manuscript spine. Up to four hierarchical levels, acts → chapters → scenes → beats, gated by your project's structure preset.
Hierarchy
- Act, top-level grouping (only when preset = Standard or Heavy). Each act has a position index, optional title, and a craft-fields metadata block.
- Chapter, every project has at least one. Chapters can belong to an act or live unattached (rendered in an “Unassigned” group).
- Scene, the unit of prose. Scenes belong to a chapter and hold both their plain-text and rich-text content.
- Beat, structural waypoint anchored to a scene (Standard / Heavy presets). Holds framework role, ordinal, description.
Chapter prefix
Each chapter row shows a hard Ch N violet prefix in front of the writer's title. The prefix reflects the row's live position in the active tree, so drag-drop reorders update the number immediately. Untitled chapters render as Ch N · Untitled.
Drag and drop
- Scene → scene, drag a scene onto another in the same chapter to reorder. Drag across chapters to move it.
- Chapter → chapter, drag the chapter header to reorder.
- Acts, reorder from the Architect view (act lanes); the outline tree displays acts but doesn't host the act-level drag handle.
Metadata edits
Hover any chapter row to reveal the More menu (⋮), the menu carries Rename, Edit metadata, and Move to trash. Acts have a hover-revealed pencil icon that opens the same metadata editor.
The metadata editor is the universal craft-fields card scoped to that level: a logline, a 1 / 3 / 5-paragraph summary trio for acts and chapters, plus the universal craft block. The AI context bundle pulls these fields when you write inside that act / chapter.
Slash-command structure breaks
Type one of these on its own line and press Enter to create a new structure node and continue typing in the new node:
/act, new act (only when preset allows acts)./chapter, new chapter./scene, new scene./page, visual page break (renders as* * *)./prompt:<shortcut>, fire a saved prompt against the active selection.
Toolbar break buttons
The prose toolbar mirrors the slash commands as click affordances: New act, New chapter, New scene, Page break, plus a +Beat affordance when the structure preset enables beats (Discovery and Heavy presets).