Before you start

All of it is optional

You can write in Quilvo without opening any of these tools. Add them when a story gets big enough to need them, not before.

Characters and codex entries belong to your account rather than to one project, so the same cast and the same world carry across a whole series. The outline is the exception: it is per project, because structure is.

Not for you? Turn off "Show story planning tools" in Settings > Writing and the whole section disappears from the sidebar.

Outline

The shape of the manuscript

The outline is a tree of everything your project is made of. It is the source of truth for order: move a scene here and it moves everywhere.

Containers	Book, part, act, section, sequence, episode, canto, verse, stanza. Pure structure.
Chapters	Real chapters, numbered and ordered.
Scenes	Real scenes. They can sit inside a chapter, inside a container, or at the top level.
Notes	Free-form reminders, anywhere except inside another note.

It matches your format

The set of types you can add adapts to the project. Plays get acts and scenes, screenplays get sequences, poetry collections get books and cantos, essays get sections. Use "+ More" to pull in any other type you want.

Status

Any item can be marked planning, drafting, revising, or done. Set it on a part and you are asked whether to cascade to everything inside. Containers show a progress bar of what is finished beneath them.

Timeline

Timeline and events

An event is one thing that happens in your story. It can be a moment or a span with a duration. The timeline is where those events live.

Two orders

Every timeline has a narrative order (the order you tell it in) and a chronological order (when things actually happen). One toggle switches between them, and events animate to their new positions, so flashbacks and scrambled chronology are obvious at a glance. The Compare view shows both at once.

Be as precise as you want

Time is a ladder you climb only as far as you need. Each scope picks its own rung.

Sequence only	No dates at all. Events simply come in an order.
Date labels	Free text you write yourself, such as "the morning after".
Numeric scale	A unit you define, such as years since the Founding, or days.
Real dates	Ordinary calendar dates via the date picker.
World calendar	Your own months, weekdays, eras, leap rules, and moons.

Threads and eras

Threads are named plot-lines you tag onto events. Tag an event with more than one and you can see where your plots cross, including as a subway map. Eras are tinted bands painted behind the timeline, such as "The Long Peace" or "Act II".

Views

The same events render six ways: a zoomable canvas, a card board, an editable list, the thread map, a presence matrix of who appears where, and the narrative-vs-chronological compare view. Filters, scope, and order carry across all of them.

Cast and codex

People and world

Characters need only a name. Add a role, a one-line hook, a colour, and any custom fields you like, then link them to the projects they appear in. Relationships connect them to each other with a type, a bond strength, and an optional status note. The relationship map draws the whole cast as a constellation you can explore and edit.

The codex is everything that is not a person: locations, factions, items, creatures, magic systems, and lore. Entries nest inside each other, link to projects, characters, and events, and are searchable by any custom field you add.

Give characters a birth and death point on the timeline and Quilvo works out their age at any event, and draws each character a lifeline showing when they were alive.

Story maps

Where it happens

Story maps put your codex locations on a canvas. Pin places, nest a regional map inside a world map, and trace the journeys your characters take between them.

Set a scale and the map starts doing arithmetic for you: distances, travel times, and whether a journey is actually possible in the time your story allows. Drag the story-time scrubber and watch events and eras appear in order.

Continuity

Quiet proofreading

Once you have entered enough for it to have an opinion, Quilvo checks your story against itself. There is no AI involved: these are plain deterministic checks over what you wrote.

A character appearing after their death or before their birth.
A character in two places at once, when both places are known.
Story time running backwards inside a chapter.
An event sitting outside the span that contains it.
Telling order contradicting where a scene sits in the outline.
Journeys that need impossible speed, or jumps across the map with no time budgeted for them.

Findings appear as a calm count in the toolbar, never a red badge. Each one links straight to the event, and anything deliberate can be marked "It's intentional" so it stays quiet for good.

Planning