Features
Everything Scriptorium does
The complete list — no tiers, no add-ons. 49 features in one purchase, on macOS, Windows, and Linux, working entirely offline.
Manuscript editor
A rich-text editor built for long-form work, organized as acts, chapters, and scenes (with configurable level names and depth).
- Full formatting. Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, super/subscript, font family & size, text and highlight colors, alignment, indent, line height, letter spacing.
- Every block a book needs. Headings, blockquotes, bulleted/numbered/todo lists, tables, code blocks with syntax highlighting, footnotes with rich content, math equations, callouts, horizontal rules, scene-break dinkuses, full-page images.
- Markdown shortcuts. Type # for a heading or > for a quote — converts as you write, hands never leave the keyboard.
- Slash commands & floating toolbar. Insert any block with /, format selections in place, drag blocks to reorder.
- Block styles (typography system). Set fonts, sizes, spacing, and margins per block type once — every matching block across the whole manuscript updates instantly.
- Find & replace. Search across the manuscript with replace support.
- Images. Insert with resize handles, alignment, and text-wrap modes.
- Table of contents. Auto-generated sidebar navigation from your headings.
- Split screen. Two attachments side by side — manuscript beside notes, research, or another chapter, each scrolling independently.
- Paste sanitization. Pasted content from the web or Word arrives clean.
World-building & story bible
Characters, locations, and events as structured data — not a folder of loose documents.
- Entity templates. Define your own types (characters, factions, artifacts…) with label, icon, color, and custom fields: text, number, checkbox, select.
- Entity pages. Each entity gets rich-text content, a cover image, portrait, custom properties, and start/end dates for timeline placement.
- Typed relationships. Connect anything to anything — 'appears in', 'located at', 'ally of' — bidirectional or one-way, with custom labels, icons, and colors.
- Template evolution. Reassign entities between templates, promote ad-hoc properties into template fields, orphan safely when templates change.
- Tables. Every entity type as a sortable, filterable spreadsheet with inline editing — including relationship columns.
- Kanban cards. The same data as visual cards with configurable layouts.
- Project table. Every entity of every type in a single cross-project view.
Plotting & planning
See the shape of the story before and while you write it.
- Zoomable timeline. Place events and entity lifespans on a pannable axis that zooms from 30-second resolution to billion-year scale, with multi-lane layout and a minimap.
- Custom & fantasy calendars. Invent months, weekdays, eras, even hours-per-day — the timeline, date pickers, and entity dates all understand your calendar. Gregorian and lunar presets included.
- Mindmap canvas. Drag entities, notes, manuscripts, files, and sticky notes onto a visual canvas; drag between nodes to create real relationships, shown as colored edges.
- Maps with linked pins. Import any image as a map, drop pins, style them, and link each pin to an entity or note page.
- Plot boards. Kanban-style planning views over your story data.
On-device AI & language tools
Every model downloads to and runs on your machine. Your manuscript is never uploaded — these features work with wifi off.
- AI writing assistant. Rewrite suggestions from a local language model running entirely on your device.
- Dictation (speech-to-text). Push-to-talk dictation with automatic punctuation, filler-word removal, and per-project vocabulary for your characters' names. English or 25 European languages (Apple Silicon).
- Read aloud (text-to-speech). 53 natural voices across 9 languages with sentence-level highlighting and speed control — hear your prose to catch what your eyes skip.
- Grammar & style checking. A bundled LanguageTool engine checks grammar, style, punctuation, and spelling in 15 languages, locally. Color-coded underlines, suggestion popovers, per-project dictionary.
- Dictionary & synonyms. Look up definitions and synonyms without leaving the editor.
Import & export
Get manuscripts in from anywhere and out to anyone. (Scriptorium is a writing app, not typesetting software — for print-ready book interiors, pair it with a formatting tool.)
- DOCX import. High-fidelity Word import: headings become chapters, with tables, images, footnotes, lists, colors, and alignment preserved. Import into a new or existing project.
- Markdown import. Bring in .md files with structure intact.
- PDF export. Styled PDF with table of contents and page numbers, hyphenation, drop caps, embedded custom fonts, footnotes at page bottom, and your block-style typography applied.
- DOCX export. Standard manuscript hand-off for agents, editors, and formatting tools — formatting, footnotes, and images preserved.
- Markdown export. Clean GFM with tables, footnotes, and scene breaks.
- Selective export. Choose and reorder exactly which manuscripts to include; export individual entities and notes too.
Goals, progress & focus
Momentum tools that stay out of the way.
- Writing goals. Daily or total word targets, linked to specific manuscripts, with days off, progress bars, and completion notifications.
- Session tracking. Words added per manuscript per day, recorded automatically as you write.
- Goal history. A calendar view of hit, missed, and ongoing days.
- Live word counts. Real-time word and character counts, aggregated across chapters and scenes.
- Pomodoro timer. A built-in focus timer with configurable work and break durations.
Never lose a word
Layers of protection between your draft and disaster.
- Automatic versioning. A snapshot of each manuscript on the first save of every day, kept on a rolling window.
- Manual snapshots. Name and keep point-in-time versions of a manuscript or the whole project — never auto-deleted.
- Visual diff & restore. See exactly what changed between now and any snapshot, then restore atomically (with a safety snapshot first).
- Trash with restore. Deleting moves to trash, recursively and reversibly. Empty it only when you're sure.
- Undo/redo everywhere. Full editor history, plus undo across tables, kanban, mindmap, maps, and timeline.
- Backups to your cloud. One-click or scheduled .scriptorium archives written to any folder — iCloud Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive. SHA-256 verified, with full or per-project restore. Scriptorium itself never talks to a cloud API.
Platform & ownership
Local-first by architecture, yours by license.
- macOS, Windows & Linux. Native desktop apps for all three, in one purchase.
- Local-first storage. Your entire library lives in a database on your device and works fully offline.
- Pay once. $60 one time — no subscription, no tiers, every feature included, forever.
- 14-day free trial. Full-featured, no credit card required.
- Organized workspace. Projects with nested folders, drag-and-drop sidebar, recents, and per-project settings for language, calendar, and grammar.
All of it, free for 14 days
No credit card. No subscription — pay once, every feature included.