Keyboard Shortcuts

Every writing app eventually gets judged on the same thing: can you use it without touching the mouse? Not because authors are mouse-haters by default — most of us would rather be writing than optimizing our workflow — but because reaching for the mouse breaks the rhythm, and the rhythm is where the writing lives. If you have to click three times to apply a formatting mark or switch documents, the draft starts noticing.

Ishvana is built keyboard-first. Every major action has a binding. You don’t have to learn them — the mouse works fine — but if you learn even a handful of the ones below, the hours you spend drafting get noticeably smoother. All shortcuts listed here use Windows bindings, which is the only platform Ishvana ships on right now.

Learn these five first

If you’re just starting: Ctrl+S, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+F, Ctrl+B, and / for slash commands. That’s 90% of the keyboard work in a typical writing session. Everything else on this page is useful but not urgent.

Editor — general

The bread and butter.

Action	Shortcut
Save	Ctrl+S
Undo	Ctrl+Z
Redo	Ctrl+Y
Find	Ctrl+F
Find & Replace	Ctrl+H

Save is technically redundant — Ishvana auto-saves as you type — but the muscle memory is there for a reason and hitting it doesn’t hurt anything. Find & Replace is the one most authors underuse; it’s the fastest way to fix a character name you’ve been misspelling for three chapters.

Editor — formatting

Action	Shortcut
Bold	Ctrl+B
Italic	Ctrl+I
Underline	Ctrl+U
Strikethrough	Ctrl+Shift+X
Highlight	Ctrl+Shift+H
Bullet list	Ctrl+Shift+8
Ordered list	Ctrl+Shift+7
Blockquote	Ctrl+Shift+B

Italic and bold cover most fiction formatting needs. Highlight is useful for marking passages you want to revisit — draft something ugly, highlight it, keep going, come back to it in the next editing pass.

Editor — writing modes

Action	Shortcut
Focus mode	Ctrl+Shift+F

Pair Focus mode with Typewriter mode

Focus mode dims everything outside your current paragraph so only the line you’re actually writing is fully visible. Typewriter mode keeps your active line centered on screen so you’re always reading at eye level instead of bending your neck toward the bottom of the window. Together they make the editor disappear — all you see is the sentence you’re writing right now. Enable Typewriter mode from the editor toolbar or in Settings → Editor.

Editor — agent triggers

These aren’t keyboard shortcuts so much as keystroke triggers — type the character and the feature opens.

Action	How to use
Slash commands	Type / at the start of a line to open the command palette. Agent actions, block inserts, and quick formatting all live there.
Entity mentions	Type @ anywhere to autocomplete entity names from your Legendry. Fuzzy search picks the right entry as you type, and the mention becomes a live link back to the lore entry.

Slash and @ are the two keystrokes that change how the editor feels once you get used to them. You stop thinking about the toolbar entirely — everything you want is one character away.

Document management

Action	Shortcut
Create fork	Ctrl+Alt+F

Forks are branch versions of a document — drafts you want to explore without losing the original. Ctrl+Alt+F creates a fork of whatever you’re currently editing, gives it a name, and drops you into the new branch. See Chapter Forking for the full workflow.

Research browser

Key	Action
URL bar focus	Click the address bar, or use your browser-style navigation
Bookmark current page	Bookmark button in the toolbar
Analyze current page	Analyze button in the toolbar

The research browser inherits most of its keyboard behavior from Chromium underneath, so common browser shortcuts work — Ctrl+L focuses the URL bar, Ctrl+R reloads, Alt+Left goes back. The in-app toolbar handles the Ishvana-specific actions (bookmark, analyze, extract).

Maps

The canvas viewer in the Maps module is keyboard-heavy. Tool switching is one letter.

Key	Tool
V	Select
P	Pin
R	Region
A	Path
T	Label
M	Measure (calibrated maps only)
Esc	Cancel current drawing operation

If you’re annotating a map, learning these is non-negotiable — clicking through the toolbar for every pin gets old inside about five minutes. See Maps for the full workflow.

Chat

Key	Action
Enter	Send message
Shift+Enter	New line in input
@	Open lore mention autocomplete
Arrow Up/Down	Navigate mention dropdown
Enter / Tab	Select mention
Esc	Dismiss mention dropdown

The @-mention flow in Chat is the same as the editor’s — same autocomplete, same Legendry lookup, same grounding behavior. See Chat for more.

What’s next

The Editor How the editor actually works — formatting, writing modes, slash commands, agent features.

Settings Customize editor behavior, appearance, and keyboard preferences.

FAQ The short answers — cost, platforms, model providers, troubleshooting.