Overview

The first pass

You do not need to set everything up before you start. Create one project, log one session, and let the rest arrive as you need it.

01
Create a project
One project per piece of writing: a novel, a short story, an essay, a collection.
02
Log a writing session
Record what you wrote today. Sessions are the raw material for every statistic in Quilvo.
03
Set a goal
A daily or weekly word target gives the dashboard something to measure you against.
04
Keep the streak alive
Any day with words logged extends your streak. Freeze the days you cannot write.
05
Add markets and submissions
When a piece is ready, track where you sent it and what came back.

Step one

Create a project

A project is any piece of writing you are working on. Give it a title and a type (novel, novella, short story, poetry collection, screenplay, essay, and more), and Quilvo will track it from idea through to publication.

What is worth filling in

Status: where the piece is right now. Idea, in progress, querying, submitted, under consideration, accepted, published, or abandoned.
Target: the word, page, or line count you are aiming at. This is what the progress bars measure against.
Unit: most projects count words, but screenplays and stage plays are often better tracked in pages, and poetry in lines.
Genre and description: optional, but they make the project searchable later when you have thirty of them.

Everything else is optional. Synopsis, development notes, start and target dates, drafts, and cast can all be added later without disturbing your numbers.

Step two

Log a writing session

A session is one stretch of work: a date, a count, and optionally how long it took. Sessions drive your statistics, your goal progress, and your streak, so logging them is the one habit worth keeping.

Fastest route

The dashboard has a quick-log box. Pick a project, type a number, done. Use the full session form when you want to record duration, session type (free writing, editing, research, outlining, brainstorming, revision), notes, or tags.

Editing days count too

Negative word counts are valid. On a day where you cut 800 words and added 200, log -600. Your project total stays honest, and the day still counts towards your streak.

Word counts

Two ways to move the total

Writers work differently, and Quilvo does not force a choice. Every session can be logged either way, and both produce the same session history.

Mode	You enter	Quilvo stores
Add words	The number you wrote in that session.	The session as entered, and adds it to the project total.
Set total	The new total your writing app or editor is reporting.	The difference from the previous total, so statistics stay accurate.

Set total is the one to reach for when your manuscript lives somewhere else and you are correcting drift. Add words is better when you know exactly what you produced in a sitting.

Step three

Goals and streaks

Goals are designed to motivate, not punish. Set a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly word target, or a project-specific goal such as reaching 90,000 words or finishing by a date. Progress tracks itself from your sessions, so there is nothing to tick off.

Streaks

Any day with words logged extends your streak. Life interrupts, so Quilvo has freeze days: mark a day as frozen with a reason and your streak survives the gap instead of resetting to zero. The streak calendar shows the last 60 days at a glance.

Where to go next

Once the daily habit is in place, the rest of Quilvo becomes useful. Core concepts walks through everything the app tracks: planning tools, markets, submissions, contacts, and the statistics that come out of them.

If you would rather log sessions from your editor or an AI assistant, see the JSON API and the MCP guide.