Codex
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Getting started

Codex organises your writing into three layers.

  • A universe holds everything a set of stories shares: the characters, places, and lore. Start here.
  • A story lives inside a universe. A universe can hold one story or a whole series.
  • A scene is where you write. Scenes group into chapters, and chapters make up a story.

Your first story

  1. On the library page, open the "New" menu at the top right and choose "New universe", give it a name, and create it. Every new universe starts with two entity categories, "Lore" and "Faction"; you can rename or replace them later.
  2. Back on the library, open the "New story" menu on the universe's own row and choose "New story in ..." to create a story. A universe with no stories yet offers the same menu in the space its stories will fill.
  3. Open the story and add a scene. The scene editor is where your prose goes.

For a story that does not belong to any world, choose "New standalone story" from either the library's "New" menu or the "Standalone stories" section's own menu instead. That universe is created for you the first time you add a story there, and the story works like any other.

That is enough to start writing. When you are ready, the planning tools help you keep track of who and what is in your world, and publishing turns a finished story into a public reading page.

Each of those has its own help article. Select the "?" at the top right of any page to open the guide for what you are looking at; select it again to go back to what you were doing. The "?" next to a heading opens the guide for that section.

Deleting things

Right-click a scene in a story's sidebar to delete it; it sits in the story's "Deleted scenes" list until you restore it or delete it forever. Deleting a universe (from its settings) keeps it in a "Deleted universes" list on the library for 30 days, restorable with one click; after that it is gone for good, along with everything in it. Stories delete immediately and permanently from their settings, so export first if in doubt.

Moving work in and out

Everything you write can leave as markdown: each story's settings offer a zip of its scenes, a universe's settings bundle the whole world, and your account page has a download of everything you own.

A story export zip can also come back in. Choose "Import a story" from a New menu on the library, or from the universe's settings under "Import and export". A dialog opens: pick the zip or drag it in, and a preview appears at once - how many chapters, scenes, and words are coming, and how each story note will be handled. A note whose character, place, or lore entry already exists in the universe (matched by name) attaches to it; a name with no match creates a new entry; a name shared by more than one entry is skipped, and the preview says so. Nothing is written until you press "Import story", and the import always creates a new story, even if one with the same title exists.

You can bring in a manuscript written elsewhere the same way. Pick a Word document (.docx) or an EPUB (.epub) in that same "Import a story" dialog. Codex reads the chapters and scenes from the way the document marks them: chapter headings, "Chapter 1" lines, and scene breaks such as a centered row of asterisks. When a document has no such markers, the whole text comes in as a single scene that you can split up afterward. Pictures embedded in the document come along when image storage is set up; the preview tells you if any will be left out. As with a zip, you check the preview before anything is written.

Jumping around

Press Ctrl+K, or use the Search button in the top bar. Type to find any universe, story, scene, character, place, or lore entry you own, and press Enter to open it. The search also looks inside your prose: matches in scene text show a snippet, and opening one selects the match in the editor. The same box lists commands for where you are, such as creating a scene, switching focus mode on, or reading the whole story as one document.

Opening a story without picking a scene resumes the scene you edited last.

Web addresses

Universes and stories get readable addresses made from their names, such as /universes/ardenfall or /stories/the-toll, so you can edit the address bar to move around. The address follows the name: renaming a universe or story in its settings moves it to a new address, and the old one stops working.