Writing Goals and Statistics
Writing goals make your momentum visible: a daily word goal, a book goal, a chapter size target, and timed sprints, backed by statistics and a writing streak. Everything here is pull, not push — progress shows when you look at it and stays quiet otherwise. No notifications, no reminders, no upgrade prompts in the editor.
If you publish serially, this is how you keep a release cadence without spreadsheets.
Goals
Daily word goal
Set a daily word target per book — pick a preset or enter your own value. As you write, a progress bar fills and shows how many words remain. The goal tracks progress for this book; it is separate from your streak, which counts a day only once your writing across all projects reaches a daily minimum (see Streak).
| Preset | Words per day |
|---|---|
| Light | 250 |
| Regular | 500 |
| Ambitious | 1 000 |
Book goal
Set a target total word count for the whole manuscript, once per book. Progress shows the book's current total words against that target. Setting it to 0 clears the goal. It does not feed the streak — the streak is about daily activity, not cumulative size — and, like every goal here, it is pull, not push: nothing notifies you when you reach it.
Chapter target
Set the intended size of a chapter, once per book. Every chapter then shows how full it is against that target — handy for seeing when today's chapter is ready to release. Going over the target is fine; it shows as over-fill, not an error.
Sprints
Start a timed sprint when you want a focused burst. The timer icon in the status bar opens the Writing Sprint dialog, which holds the setup — a duration and an optional word target — the last sprint's result, and your recent sprints. The command palette opens it too (Start Writing Sprint...). It never opens by itself, and closing it leaves a running sprint running.
While a sprint runs, the status bar shows the countdown, target progress if you set a target, and pause and stop beside it. At the end, the result — words written, duration, words per hour — waits in the Sprint dialog until you open it. Ending or abandoning a sprint has no consequence beyond the result.
Pause when something interrupts you. The countdown freezes and the sprint stays open until you resume it: the same sprint, picking up exactly where it stopped, never a new one. Paused time is left out of the sprint's duration and its words per hour, and words you write while it is paused count toward your day, your daily goal, and your streak — just not toward the sprint or its target. Pause and resume sit in the status bar beside the countdown, in the Sprint dialog, and in the command palette.
A sprint belongs to the book it started in. Switching to another book ends it and records its result in that book's sprint history, instead of leaving it counting against a book you have moved away from.
How words are counted
"Words written" is what feeds your daily progress, sessions, and streak. It counts the words you add through editor edits — typing and pasting into the editor. A few rules keep the number honest:
- Deletions never subtract. Rewriting 300 words down to 250 still counts as 250 written.
- Importing a draft, restoring an earlier version, and edits made by the AI assistant change the manuscript but do not count as words you wrote.
- Rearranging existing prose (moving text, find-and-replace, cut-and-paste within the manuscript) is not new writing.
- Notes and synopsis text never count — they are not the manuscript.
Book total is a separate number: simply the manuscript's current word count.
A day is your device's local calendar day.
Sessions
You do not start or stop anything for normal writing. A session begins with your first written word and ends after a short pause in activity. While one is active, the status bar shows its timer and word count — except while a sprint runs, when the sprint's countdown takes that place. The session keeps going underneath, and its readout comes back when the sprint ends.
Statistics
Open the Statistics panel from the activity sidebar or the command palette. It shows, when you look:
Today
- Words written today
- Words per hour — your current pace
- Session time
This week — a 7-day chart, one bar per day, matching the words recorded that day.
This book
| Metric | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Total words | The book's accumulated word count |
| Active days | Days you wrote at least something in this book |
| Average (writing days) | Average words per day over active days only |
| Average (all days) | Average over every calendar day |
Quiet milestones (word-count and streak marks) are collected in a section that stays collapsed until you open it. Reaching one changes nothing else.
Streak
Your streak counts consecutive days of writing at the author level, across all projects on this device — writing in any book keeps it alive. It shows your current streak and your best, plus the day's state:
- Safe — you have met the minimum for today
- At risk — not met yet, but the day is not over
- None — a day that didn't reach the minimum ended it
There's always a minimum in force — it can't be turned off. It defaults to 100 words a day, counted across every project on this device combined: write 200 words in one book and 200 in another, and together they clear a 300-word minimum. You can raise the minimum, or lower it, but never below 100 words. Change it in Settings.
The minimum is separate from a book's daily word goal (see Daily word goal): the goal is how much you want to write in that book; the minimum is how much a day, added up across all your projects, must reach to keep the streak. Meeting the goal doesn't by itself hold the streak — reaching the minimum does.
Because only added words count (see How words are counted), a day spent only cutting or reorganizing won't reach the minimum, however productive the revision — and won't keep the streak alive either.
Change the minimum any time and it applies right away, including to today: your day is checked again immediately against the new value, so lowering the minimum can turn an at-risk day safe on the spot. A day already finished keeps the minimum it was recorded under and is never re-judged.
The best-streak value is always preserved, even after a break. Because the streak belongs to you and not to a file, it stays on this device; it does not travel when you copy a project folder.
Goals never get in your way
A goal is a mirror, not a gate. No goal state ever blocks or delays writing, saving, autosave, version history, or export, and nothing warns you in the writing flow. The whole point is to keep writing.
Where progress shows
| Place | What appears |
|---|---|
| Statistics panel | Today, the week, the book, milestones — when you open it |
| Sprint dialog | The sprint setup, the last sprint's result, and your recent sprints — when you open it |
| Status bar | The streak, daily-goal progress, and the sprint, all present whenever a project is open; the session readout while a session runs outside a sprint |
The status-bar elements keep their places so the strip does not rearrange itself as your day goes on, and each carries its value only when it has one: the day count once the streak is above zero, the bar and percent once a goal is set, the countdown while a sprint runs. With nothing to report, each is its icon alone — no number, no color, no alarm. Quiet is what they say, not whether they are there.
Each is also a way in: the streak and the session readout open Statistics, the goal jumps to the daily goal, and the timer icon opens the Sprint dialog.
Asking the assistant
The AI assistant, when enabled, can read your progress for you ("how many words did I write today, and what's my streak?") and, when you ask, set a goal (daily, book, or chapter) or start, pause, resume, and stop a sprint. It never does so on its own, and any manuscript it edits still does not count toward your words written — the streak tracks your writing.
Saved statistics and daily history travel with the project folder and survive a database rebuild; they are part of Backup. The streak, being device-level, does not travel with the project.