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Interface

Writer Studio is a writing workspace built around one manuscript. The center is always the editor; everything else is a panel, tab, or indicator that serves the active book and scene. The shell is rearrangeable, and the arrangement is never part of your book — losing your layout loses nothing.

The shell

┌─────────────────────────── Title bar ───────────────────────────┐
├──────────┬──────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────┤
│ Activity │                                  │                   │
│ bar      │        Editor area               │   Right panel     │
│          │        (tabs + splits)           │                   │
│ Left     │                                  │                   │
│ panel    │                                  │                   │
├──────────┴──────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────┤
│                          Status bar                              │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

On first launch only the essentials are open — the editor and the structure tree (Explorer). Every other tool is closed but one click away in the activity bar.

Title bar

The strip across the top of the window. Its most visible element is the command field — click it (or use the shortcut) to open quick open and the command palette. The title bar also keeps project and book identity visible, so you always know where you are, and lets you switch between books in the project.

Activity bar

A narrow strip of icons that opens the side panels. Each icon switches its panel on. Typical tools:

Tool What it shows
Explorer The book's structure tree (parts/acts, chapters, scenes)
Search Search within the active book; jump to a result
Book Wiki Characters, locations, and plotlines
Issues Revision markers that need attention
Statistics Goals, streak, and writing progress
Properties Metadata for the selected item
Version History Past versions of the current scene, with diff and restore
Trash Deleted items, with restore
Agent The optional AI assistant
Share Beta-reader draft sharing (needs an account)

A tool whose precondition is not met — Share without an account, the Agent with AI off — stays visible but greyed; clicking it still opens the panel and explains how to enable it. Settings opens as its own surface, not a panel. Version History follows the scene you're editing — it always shows the current scene's versions.

Panels: left and right

There are exactly two panel zones, left and right. Each zone shows one panel at a time — clicking another tool switches that zone's panel. At most two panels are on screen (one per side) plus the editor. You can move a tool between the left and right zones, and hide either side.

Editor area

The center of the workspace. It holds tabs — a scene to edit, a larger-item view, a Book Wiki card, or a note — and can be split.

Tabs

  • Each scene, view, card, or note opens in its own tab.
  • Right-click a tab to close it, close others, close to the right/left, or close all — or to move it to the other split pane without dragging.
  • Drag a tab to reorder it, or drag it into another split group to move it.
  • The tab bar also carries the workspace history cluster: Back/Forward buttons that step through a single navigation stack shared across all splits, and a Recent editors dropdown for one-click return to a recently opened tab.

Splits

The editor area can divide into up to four tab groups. The core use is writing a scene beside its character card, or a scene beside a reference scene. Any kind of tab can live in any group.

Action What it does
Split right Divide the active group vertically
Split down Divide the active group horizontally
Close group Close the focused tab group
Focus next group Move focus to the next group

There is no toolbar above the prose. Selection never pops a floating menu — selection operations live in the context menu, shortcuts, and the palette. In-scene find is a command, a shortcut (Cmd+F / Ctrl+F), and Edit → Find in editor in the app menu.

Status bar

One strip at the bottom. Book- and author-level indicators (streak, daily-goal progress, session or sprint timer) are always relevant; scene-scoped indicators follow the focused tab group:

  • Save state — whether the focused scene is saved.
  • Word count — for the focused scene.
  • Proofreading count — issues in the focused scene (this is where proofreading lives — there is no toolbar for it above the prose).

Focus mode (Zen)

Focus mode hides the activity bar, both panels, and the status bar, leaving only the editor — plus a persistent orientation HUD showing the book › chapter › scene breadcrumb and the current save state, so you always know where you are without leaving the mode.

  • Enter: the command palette → Focus mode, or its shortcut.
  • Exit: Escape, or the on-screen exit control.

Command palette

The palette is the complete catalog of what the app can do, plus navigation.

  • Open it from the title-bar command field or Cmd+P / Ctrl+P.
  • The default mode is quick open: type a scene, chapter, part, or entity name to jump to it.
  • Type > to switch to command mode: every command, shown only where it makes sense in your current context.

Every command shows its shortcut where one exists. Every panel can be opened, focused, and closed from the palette — nothing requires the mouse.

  • Context menus are strictly about the thing you clicked — a selection, a tree item, a card, an underline. Global actions are not in them.
  • The app menu (File / Edit / View / Window / Help) carries the desktop-standard commands; global actions live here and in the palette.