Inviting a reviewer

You can ask someone to read a story and leave comments before it is finished. They follow a link you send them; they do not need an account.

Creating a review link

Open the story's settings and find the Review section. Create a review link, optionally noting who it is for and how long it should work. Copy the link right away - it is shown only once - and send it however you like.

Each link is its own invitation. If you want feedback from three people, make three links, so you can see who said what and close them separately.

What the reviewer sees

The link opens the story in a review workspace: the chapter and scene outline on the left, the scene to read in the middle, and the comment threads on the right. The reviewer gives a name (or, if they have an account here and are signed in, their own name is used), then reads and comments:

Selecting a passage brings up a small toolbar to comment on exactly those words.
The "On the whole scene" button at the top of the Comments panel comments on the scene as a whole.
They see earlier comments on the story and can reply to them from each card.
A trash icon on their own comment or suggested edit removes it if they change their mind. The opening comment of a thread can only be removed before anyone has replied to it.

They move through the story scene by scene. The list on the left is the chapter and scene outline, with a count beside each scene that has notes and a running total at the top; clicking a scene opens it. Markers down the right edge of the page show where the notes sit. The right pane is the Comments panel, and the Open and Done buttons inside it switch between the comments still to deal with and the ones marked Done. On a narrow screen such as a phone, the three areas become tabs at the top - Scenes, Manuscript, and Notes - so the reader can switch between reading and the comments.

If a name in the manuscript is underlined, it is a character, place, or piece of lore the author has written about. Clicking it opens a short card about them; reviewers see this summary but not the author's full notes.

If the link allows suggested edits, selecting a passage also offers "Suggest edit": the reviewer types a replacement for the selected text and sends it as a proposal. You choose per link whether to allow this when you create it.

Reviewers only ever see this one story. They never change your text directly - a suggestion only touches the prose if you accept it - and they cannot see your other stories, characters, or notes.

Reviewing your own story

You do not have to invite anyone to use review mode. Open Review from the story's left-hand tabs (Write, Plan, Notes, Review), or from "Review mode" in the Review section of settings, to read your manuscript and leave your own comments and suggested edits, the same way a reviewer would. Your notes are marked as yours, and any reviewers you have invited see them too, so you can offer a second opinion of your own.

Unlike a reviewer, you can also edit the manuscript right here. The middle of the review workspace is the live editor, with the same formatting bar as the writing editor, so you can fix a line on the spot instead of switching back to Write. This is what makes accepting a suggestion useful: take the change, then keep shaping it. Selecting a passage still brings up the toolbar to comment or suggest an edit on those words.

The right side of the workspace has two tabs: Review, the notes on the open scene, and Assistant. The Assistant tab is a chat about this story - ask it about a character, talk a reviewer's comment over, or have it look over what you are reading. The Review with the Assistant button at the top of the tab starts a full review pass. The Assistant tab appears once you have set the Assistant up on your account and have not muted it for this story.

Asking the Assistant to review

Open the review window and pick what to review and what to check. You can open it several ways:

Right-click a scene or chapter in the sidebar, open the Assistant submenu, and choose Review with the Assistant.
In Review mode, open the Assistant tab on the right and use the Review with the Assistant button at the top.
From the command bar (Ctrl+K), choose Review with the Assistant.
In the Assistant chat, type /review.

The window has two choices. First, what to review: this scene, this chapter, or the whole story. Second, what to check:

General notes leaves a few high-value notes, right for a draft still in motion. This is the default.
Spelling and grammar is an exhaustive pass for typos, punctuation, wrong homophones, and spelling-convention consistency.
Prose and style looks for filter verbs, point-of-view epithets, dangling modifiers, repetition tics, and pacing.
Entities and lore checks names, facts, characterisation, and lore against your worldbuilding.

Tick more than one to check several at once, or tick all three for a full copyedit. The detailed passes leave many small notes by design - you accept or reject each one, and discarding a nitpick costs one click.

A single scene is reviewed right away. A chapter or the whole story runs in the background, and a card in the bottom corner shows it working and tells you when it is ready; you are notified as well. A whole-story review also finishes with a cross-scene pass that reads the entire story in order, looking for things no single-scene pass can see: names or facts that drift between chapters, timeline arithmetic that does not add up, an idiom or spelling convention rendered differently in different places.

Working through the feedback

The right pane's Comments panel shows every note on the open scene, yours and your reviewers', each as its own card. When you have set up the Assistant on your account page, an Assistant panel sits beside it, and you can switch between the two. The left list gathers them across the whole manuscript so you can see where the work is. If you asked the Assistant to review (from a scene, chapter, or the whole story), its comments and suggested edits appear here too, marked as the Assistant's, and you work through them the same way. To get Assistant feedback that fits what you are writing, fill in "Genre and style" in the story's settings with a sentence on the genre, narration, and prose style you are aiming for; the Assistant then judges the manuscript against that instead of a general standard. The intended audience, the spelling you write in (British or American), and a comparison title or two all help, so mention them there too. Reviewers and readers never see it. If the story takes place in an existing published setting such as Forgotten Realms or Azeroth, tick "Established setting" in the universe's settings as well; the Assistant will then also check your manuscript against what it knows of that setting's canon, with your own material winning wherever the two differ. Reply on a card to keep a conversation going, and resolve a thread when you have dealt with it. Resolved threads stay visible for the record, and you can reopen them.

A suggested change shows the original text struck through and the proposed text beside it, both on its card and in the scene. Accept one to apply it to the scene (a history entry records it), or reject it - this works the same for your own suggestions and a reviewer's. The accept and reject controls sit in the top corner of each card. You decide one at a time, in any order. Once a change is in, you can carry on editing it in the manuscript. A comment or suggested edit you left yourself carries a trash icon to remove it; to clear a reviewer's note, resolve the comment or reject the edit rather than deleting it.

A pending suggestion's card also takes replies, so you can talk a proposed edit over before deciding on it. Reviewers see and join these conversations like any thread.

When the Assistant is set up and a note came from it, replying on that note makes the Assistant answer you right there. Ask it why it suggested something, or ask for a different wording: it can revise its own pending suggestion, and the card updates with the new proposal. It never decides anything - accepting or rejecting stays yours - and it only ever responds to you, never to your reviewers.

Comments and suggestions point at the exact words they were made on. If you edit the text afterwards, they follow the passage when it can be found; if the passage itself was rewritten, a comment is kept and marked as referring to older text, and a suggestion can no longer be accepted, only rejected.

Hearing about activity

New comments and suggestions show up under the bell in the top bar, and an email gathers them up (a busy hour sends one message, not one per comment). Reviewers hear back the same way: a reviewer signed in to an account gets the bell and email, and a guest who left an email address gets the email with a link to stop further messages. Choose which of these reach you, and where, under Notifications on your account page.

Ending a review

Revoke a link in the Review section to stop it working. The comments you already received stay. Deleting the story removes its review threads and reviewers with it.