Writing

Canon

Your project's cast list: the Characters in your book and the Relationships between them, curated by you and read by the AI so it writes consistently with what you confirmed.

The Canon graph, with a Character profile open in the Canon panel

How it works#

The Canon is your project's cast list: the Characters in your book and the Relationships between them, kept per project. The AI reads the Canon whenever those people come up, so suggestions from the AI Sidebar, the AI Agent, and Inline AI stay consistent with what you confirmed — names, aliases, and how everyone is connected.

Nothing enters the Canon on its own. You either add an entry yourself, or you confirm a find that a scan surfaced. The AI can read the Canon, but it can never write to it.

Open the Canon panel#

Click the Canon icon in the activity bar. A badge on the icon shows how many open finds are waiting for your decision.

The panel lists every Character with search over names and aliases. Click a Character to open their profile, where you can edit the name, aliases, and description in place — and see and manage that person's Relationships.

Add a Character or Relationship#

Open the + menu at the top of the Canon panel.
Choose Add Character — name, optional comma-separated aliases (like "Mom" or a nickname), and an optional free-text description.
Or choose Add Relationship — pick two Characters and describe how the first relates to the second, like "mentor of" or "sister of". Labels you've already used are suggested as you type.

A Relationship reads in one direction ("Elena → mentor of → Jakob"), but a label like "sibling of" naturally works both ways — there's no fixed list to pick from.

Let Chaptora find your characters#

Instead of typing everyone in by hand, let a scan read your text:

Open the scan menu at the top of the Canon panel.
Choose Scan Chapter for the chapter you have open, or Scan Book for the whole project.
Each person or relationship the scan recognizes appears as a card in the panel, labeled with the chapter it was found in.
Confirm what's right — you can correct the name or trim the description first — or Dismiss what isn't.

With several cards open you can select them with checkboxes (or Select all) and confirm the whole selection at once.

A few things the scan takes care of for you:

One person, one find. "Mom", "Mother", and "Elara's mother" surface as a single find with the variants as aliases — not three cards.
Dismissed stays dismissed. A find you threw away doesn't come back on the next scan, not even under a variant name.
Already known is skipped. The scan never re-suggests a Character you already confirmed.

The Canon graph#

Click the graph icon at the top of the panel to see the whole web at once: every Character as a node, every Relationship as a labeled line. The layout is stable — the same Canon always draws the same picture — and you can drag nodes around or click Tidy up to rearrange everything with minimal crossings.

Clicking a node opens that Character's profile in the panel. Back to chapter returns you to the Editor.

Canon mentions in the Editor#

Once a Character is in the Canon, their name (and aliases) are underlined wherever they appear in your chapters. The underline is a promise: the AI sees this Character too.

Hover a mention to see a card with the name, aliases, and a description excerpt.
Click Open in Canon on the card — or Cmd+click the mention — to jump to the profile.
A plain click just places your cursor, like in any other text.

Type @ in the AI Sidebar composer to open a picker over your Characters. It filters names and aliases as you type and inserts the full name into your message — a quick way to point the AI at exactly the right person.

How the AI uses the Canon#

When a Canon Character is mentioned in the text the AI is working on — or in your message to it — Chaptora includes that Character's description, aliases, and Relationships in what the AI reads. The AI Sidebar and AI Agent also see the Character's direct connections; Inline AI gets a slimmer version to stay fast.

An empty Canon costs nothing: if nothing matches, nothing is added.

Turn the Canon off#

The switch lives at the bottom of the Canon panel. Off means no underlines, no scans, and nothing added to what the AI reads — for example when you're writing non-fiction. Your Characters and Relationships are kept, so turning it back on loses nothing.

Limitations#

The Canon tracks people. Places, objects, and timelines aren't structured entries — describe them in a Character's description or in your Sources.
Mentions are underlined in Chapters only, not in front or back matter.
Dragged graph positions last while the graph is open; reopening restores the standard layout.
The Canon is reference material like Sources: it isn't part of version history and isn't affected by Restore.