A guide to the chronicle.

The Drafting Table is the cabinet behind the screen. Every NPC the party has met, every tavern they've stayed in, every faction whispering in the corners — one item type, bent to the way you actually prep, linked the way the world actually connects. Type a name in any field and a name they've heard before pops up before you finish.

Each item carries a flag for who can see it. Mark a place public and your players see it on their side of the screen. Keep an NPC GM-only and the players never know they exist until you decide they do. The line between the screen sides is one switch on each item, and it is always visible.

Keep your original documents and start with the notes for one game. Where the beta import feature is available, open Import / paste notes in your world, or choose Bring my notes on a new account if that option is shown. Paste text from your notes and review the proposed entries. You can add entries by hand if import is unavailable.

Choose the parser before reading the notes. Pattern parse sends the text to Storywright's server and uses no AI provider or AI allowance. It recognizes # headings, Name: description lines, and **Name** — description lines, with bullets folding into the entry above. AI parse can read freeform prose when available. It sends the pasted notes to an AI provider and is subject to your account's allowance. Leave personal information or material you do not have permission to share out of the paste.

Suggested matches can be skipped, updated, or created as new entries. An update appends the new material to the existing entry's GM notes. Check that two similar names really refer to the same person or place before updating. Suggested [[Wikilink]]and @mention connections also need review.

A single paste proposes up to 200 entries and one session. If the text contains more sessions, bring them in separately. On a Free-plan world, check the import result for entries that did not fit within the item limit; an accepted batch does not mean every proposed entry was saved.

Paste import does not log into Kanka, World Anvil, Notion, or Obsidian for you, and it does not upload a ZIP or vault. Later edits in your old tool do not synchronize with Storywright. Keep the source files while you check the move.

Most world tools are filing cabinets. Storywright has one too — but the Tracker is different. Load the session and the Tracker pulls up the objectives on the table tonight, the NPCs your players are likely to meet, and the locations in play. Search is one keystroke: type half a name, jump to the page. Mark an objective hit and it's logged with a timestamp for the recap.

GM-only notes drop into the same surface, side by side with the public scene. "Morren is lying about the coin." Players never see it. When the session ends, the notes you took are already linked to the entities and already on the session page; there is no cleanup.

A story arc is a thread between people, places, and time. Storywright treats it the same way your party does — as a knot of references that have to come due eventually. Mark it active, completed, or cold. Drop it into the Tracker when it's on the table tonight; pin it to a session when it advances; close it when the table is done with it.

Players only see the arcs and objectives you've shared. The rest stay in your pocket, ready for the night they finally matter.

Every player gets a journal. Rich text, their words, their voice. They can pin annotations to NPCs and places they've met, so next session they're not asking who the steward was. If they had a hunch about Lady Verrin in session 11, the hunch is right there, dated and theirs.

They see only what you've chosen to share — a faction here, a rumor there, the map when they find it. No accidental spoilers, no "wait, don't read that yet."

Players can also set goals for their character — what they're chasing, who they want to become. Goals flow up to you as the GM, quietly, so you can weave them into the story and pay them off sessions later. It's the answer to "why would my players open this": their character's own thread through your world lives here.

When the session ends, your notes are already linked to the people and places they mention — so Storywright drafts the recap for you from what actually happened at the table. You read it, cut what doesn't belong, strike anything that was GM-only, and publish. Nothing reaches your players without your sign-off; the draft is a starting point, never the final word. That's the deal throughout: the tool drafts, the GM decides.

Published recaps become each player's "previously on…" briefing — the two-minute read that replaces the first ten minutes of every session spent re-explaining the last one. Before the next game, Storywright assembles a pre-session briefing from the campaign's memory: what's open, who was met, which promises are still on the table.

Storywright is a place to keep the world, not a place to lock it up. A JSON account export — your profile, metadata for the worlds you own, your own journal entries and annotations — on every plan, free included. It is not yet a full world archive: sessions, characters and World Builder entities aren't in it today. And if Storywright ever winds down, you'll get at least sixty days' notice before anything changes.

Mid-session you're not clicking. Search already works from the keyboard — one keystroke, half a name, jump to the page. The rest of the set (private notes, objectives, the whole Tracker as a two-hands-no-mouse surface) is still landing: once it's in, the Tracker will show each binding at the bottom of the screen and stay out of the way until you reach for it. Consider this chapter half manual, half roadmap.

A quick reference for the terms used throughout Storywright, so nothing in the manual, the app, or a briefing reads like jargon. The full list — 15 terms — now lives on its own page.

Weave

The view that shows how the people, places, items, factions, events, and Story Arcs in a World connect.

Strand

One thing shown in the Weave — for example, a Character, Place, Item, Faction, Event, or Story Arc.

Thread

A connection a GM draws between two Strands in the Weave. A Thread can stay private or be revealed to players.

Drafting Table

The GM’s cabinet of linkable people, places, factions, items, and lore.

See the full glossary →