AI Assistant
Writer Studio has one AI assistant: an agent you talk to in plain language. It can do the same things you can do in the app — search, open scenes, read the Book Wiki, edit scenes, run and read proofreading diagnostics — because you ask it, not because it has its own private buttons.
There are no AI-only features. Anything the assistant does, you can also do by hand, and the product is fully useful with AI turned off. AI is off by default.
Turning AI on and choosing a provider
AI does nothing until you enable it. The first time you enable it, you choose a provider — there is no default, because where your text goes is your decision.
| Provider | Where text goes |
|---|---|
| Anthropic | The provider's servers |
| OpenAI | The provider's servers |
| DeepSeek | The provider's servers |
| GigaChat | The provider's servers |
| YandexGPT | The provider's servers |
| A custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint | Wherever that endpoint points |
| Ollama (local) | Stays on your device — nothing leaves |
| Authr AI | Our servers (Authr Plus subscription, no key needed) |
For BYOK cloud providers you bring your own key: paste the key the provider gave you. Custom and YandexGPT need one more field filled in before the selection takes effect — the endpoint URL for Custom, the Yandex Cloud folder ID for YandexGPT. The choice screen states plainly where your text will be sent. Pick Ollama if you want AI without sending any text off your machine.
Authr AI needs no key at all. Instead, you sign in with your Writer Studio account and need an active Authr Plus subscription. Authr Plus is our subscription for the services that run on our servers; Authr AI is the AI provider inside it. Authr Plus plans differ only in how much AI you get per month — everything else Authr Plus includes is the same on every plan. If you're signed in but not subscribed, you'll see a way to subscribe right there. If your AI budget runs out, you'll see a distinct message pointing you to manage your subscription — not a generic "request failed" error.
Manage all of this in Settings → AI: enable or disable AI, change provider, and update your key.
Privacy. Your key and provider settings are device-level secrets. They are never stored inside the project folder, never exported, and never included in a backup — so copying or sharing a project never leaks your key. Manuscript text leaves your device only to the provider you chose, and only for an operation you asked for.
Talking to the assistant
Open the Agent panel, type a request in natural language, and the assistant acts through the same operations you would use. For example:
- "Where does Olga first meet Igor?" — it searches and answers.
- "Open the scenes where the harbor appears." — it navigates for you.
- "Who is Captain Renn?" — it reads the Book Wiki.
- "Rewrite this dialogue to be drier." — it proposes an edit.
- "Run the language check on this chapter and list the issues." — it reads the proofreading diagnostics.
You never pick a command from a menu — you describe what you want. The same assistant handles everything.
Select text in the editor and press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+A to open the assistant with a prompt about that passage already filled in.
Input shortcuts:
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Enter |
Send the message |
Shift+Enter |
New line |
Reviewing changes (you approve everything)
The assistant never changes your manuscript or your confirmed story knowledge on its own. When it wants to edit a scene or add to the Book Wiki, its output arrives as a suggestion you review first.
- Apply — the change is written in. It is a normal edit, so a single undo reverses it.
- Reject — nothing changes; your text stays exactly as it was.
Text edits show a diff so you can see exactly what would change, and you can expand the full suggested text before deciding. Suggested wiki entries appear as "suggested" and never become canonical until you confirm them. Available edit shapes include replacing text, appending to the end, and inserting at the start.
Asking your book
When you ask the assistant a question about your story, it answers from your manuscript using the same read and search tools you have — not from guesswork. Answers cite the scenes and entries they came from, and you can jump straight to that evidence.
The assistant follows the same rules your own view does: anything in the Trash is invisible to it, so trashed scenes never show up in answers or context.
Seeing what context was used
For any operation, you can see what project context the assistant used — which scenes, which wiki entries, which guidance. Nothing is hidden, so you can verify what was sent before trusting an answer.
AI Guide and suggested prompts
The AI Guide is a place to write standing instructions for the assistant — writing style, world rules, naming conventions, anything it should keep in mind. Guides attach at the level you want — project, book, part, chapter, or scene — and a deeper guide adds to the ones above it rather than replacing them. The assistant follows your guide, but it never overrides a direct request or the approval step.
Around the editor, the wiki, and the issues list you'll see suggested prompts — common asks, prefilled, one click from where you are. They are shortcuts into the one assistant, not separate features.
Conversations per book
Each book keeps its own list of conversations; chat history never mixes between books.
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| New conversation | + in the panel header |
| Switch conversation | Conversation list → pick from history |
| Rename | Double-click the conversation name |
| Delete | Conversation list → delete icon next to the name |
Cost and context indicator
Below the input, the current session shows tokens sent and received and a rough cost estimate. It appears only while a conversation is active, so you always have a sense of what a request is costing.
Context window and compaction
A long conversation eventually fills its context window. When that happens, the assistant compacts older context automatically to keep going — there's no separate action to take, no warning shown, and no undo; it happens as part of answering your next message.
Start a new conversation if you'd rather keep a clean context — your history stays in the conversation list either way.
Message controls
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Copy a message | Hover an assistant reply → copy icon (assistant replies only) |
| Retry a request | Retry in the banner at the top of the conversation, after a failed request |
| Stop generation | Stop in the input area |
If a response takes too long, you'll see a notice that the reply didn't arrive in time — retry the request or start a new conversation with +.