Tracking Your Books
The main view of Desktop is a filterable table of every book you’re tracking. Title, overall completion percentage, outline status, the weakest dimension in its completion score, and a stage badge. Click any row to open the full dossier for that book on the right side of the screen.
What makes the view useful isn’t the table itself. It’s that the table re-sorts and re-filters based on which lens you have active. You switch lenses from the sidebar or by pressing a number key. The register responds immediately, and so does everything else on the Desktop tab — the attention panel, the stage map, the selected book dossier. Lenses are how you shift Desktop between “show me everything” and “show me only what needs work.”
The five lenses
Section titled “The five lenses”All tracked books, sorted by completion from strongest to weakest. The default lens. Best for the question how am I doing across everything?
Only books that need focus right now — weak dimensions, early stages, or active alerts. Sorted by attention score. Best for the question what should I work on today?
Only books in Foundation or Drafting stage, weakest first. Best when you’re starting new work and need to know which blank canvas needs you most.
Mid-stage books where the bones exist but the flesh doesn’t. This is usually where you spend the most time on a long project, and it’s the lens to open on most writing days.
Books in Closing or Readying stage, strongest first. Best for sprint weeks and pre-submission passes.
Press 1 through 5 from anywhere on the Desktop tab to switch lenses. The register re-sorts, the attention queue panel updates, and your selected book stays selected if it’s still in the filtered set. If it’s been filtered out, the dossier panel clears.
Filtering and search
Section titled “Filtering and search”Above the register, a search box filters the list by title. It’s a plain text filter — no fuzzy matching, no regex, just substring. Type three letters and the register narrows to matching books instantly. This works on top of the active lens, so you can filter the Attention lens to only books whose title contains “Book One.”
What each row shows
Section titled “What each row shows”Every row in the register shows the same five pieces of information:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Title | The book’s title, with an icon indicating whether it’s a standalone book or part of a series |
| Completion | Overall percentage computed from the completion formula |
| Outline status | Where the book’s outline stands — “In Progress,” “Done,” “Unknown” |
| Weakest dimension | The lowest-scoring enabled dimension, with its specific percentage |
| Stage badge | Which creative stage the book is in right now |
The weakest dimension column is usually the most useful at a glance. If every book in your project has “word-count: 35%” as its weakest dimension, you know where to spend the week. If they all say “plot-resolution: 20%,” you know which module to open next.
The dossier panel
Section titled “The dossier panel”Click any row in the register and the right panel opens with the full dossier for that book. Title, overall completion percentage, stage label with explanation, outline status, and a per-dimension breakdown showing exactly where the percentages come from.
If the outline-status dimension is sitting at 70%, the dossier tells you “14 of 20 scenes marked done” — so you can see the actual math, not just the score. If word count is at 40%, it tells you “16,400 of 40,000 words.” Every dimension has a detail line that explains what’s being counted and how the percentage was computed.
This is the panel you use when you think wait, why is this book at 58%? and need an answer that isn’t “because the algorithm said so.”
Sort order per lens
Section titled “Sort order per lens”Each lens applies its own sort logic on top of the filter. You don’t pick the sort order — it’s tuned to the lens:
- Overview: completion descending, then title ascending on ties.
- Attention: attention score descending, then completion ascending on ties (weakest book wins a tie).
- Establishing: completion ascending (weakest first), then stage priority.
- Developing: attention score descending, then completion descending.
- Closing: completion descending, then stage priority (Readying before Closing on ties).
The lens-specific sort is intentional. Each lens is for a different question, and the right sort for “where should I start writing today?” is not the right sort for “what’s closest to done?” — so Desktop picks the right sort for the question each lens answers.