Custom prompts
Save prompts you find yourself reaching for, give them slash shortcuts, and run them against any selection in the editor. The library ships with eight Pendraic-canned prompts; your saved prompts sit alongside them.
Anatomy of a Pendraic prompt
Pendraic builds every prompt as system context → project context → instruction. Your prompt body is just the instruction layer. The system layer carries Pendraic's default rules (no em dashes, voice print enforcement); the project layer carries the active scene's context bundle. You don't need to repeat any of that.
Variable injection
Drop {{token}} placeholders anywhere in your prompt body. Pendraic substitutes them at run time from live database state. There are 70 static tokens covering every PENDRAIC layer (project, series, world, scene, chapter, act, beat, story index, voice, promise) plus 8 parameterized template families for prose slicing and structural references. The full reference is the variable vocabulary page.
The 8 parameterized template families
Each one takes a number you fill in at write time. Pendraic resolves the slice from live state on every call.
| Token | Resolves to |
|---|---|
{{prose_all}} | Full plain text of the active scene. |
{{prose_last_<N>}} | Last N words of prose before your cursor. |
{{prose_next_<N>}} | Next N words of prose after your cursor. |
{{chapter_<N>}} | Full prose of the Nth chapter (1-indexed across the project). |
{{chapter_<N>_scene_<M>}} | Mth scene inside the Nth chapter (both 1-indexed). |
{{scene_<N>}} | Nth scene of the active chapter (1-indexed). |
{{act_<N>}} | Full prose of every scene inside the Nth act. |
{{series_metadata}} | Composite block of every series-level field (title, logline, shape, POV strategy, continuity, audience, planned books, time span, thematic argument). |
Open the in-editor variable picker (the Insert variable button on the prompt body field) for the searchable list with all 70 static tokens grouped by scope.
Three ways to invoke a prompt
- Right rail. Open the AI dock and click any prompt card. The active selection (or the last paragraph if no selection) becomes the input.
- Slash command. Type
/prompt:<shortcut>on its own line and press Enter. The slash literal is consumed; the prompt fires against your current selection. - Penny chat. Ask Penny to run a saved prompt by name. Penny calls the same dispatcher the editor uses, so behavior matches.