Document Management
A serious writing project eventually has a lot of documents. Thirty chapters, each in its own file. Character sketches. Scene drafts. World history notes. Alternate versions of the same chapter from two POVs. Research dumps that haven’t been folded into the Legendry yet. Old drafts that aren’t relevant anymore but you can’t bring yourself to delete. By the time a project hits 50 or 100 files, the question stops being “can I open my files” and becomes “can I find the right one in under five seconds.” Document management in Ishvana is the layer that answers that second question — folders, tags, status tracking, title filtering, semantic search, and a sidebar that actually stays useful at scale. This page walks through all of it.
The short version: documents live in a nested folder hierarchy, tags are how you mark state and filter at scale, the sidebar search has two modes that both matter, and the context menu handles most of the operations you’d otherwise have to dig through menus for.
Creating and managing documents
Section titled “Creating and managing documents”The day-to-day operations:
- New document. Click the + button in the sidebar toolbar, or click “New Document” from the editor’s empty state when no document is open. A fresh document opens in the editor immediately, ready to rename.
- Open from disk. Import an existing file via the file dialog. Ishvana accepts DOCX, Markdown, plain text, and a few other formats — see Import & Export for the full list.
- Save. Automatic every two seconds (or whatever interval you’ve set in Settings → Editor), plus manual save via Ctrl+S or the toolbar button. You rarely need the manual save because auto-save has already caught up by the time you’d think to press it.
- Delete. Right-click a document in the sidebar and pick Delete. Confirmation prompt protects against accidental one-click deletion.
- Rename. Edit the title directly in the editor’s title field. No separate rename dialog.
Folder organization
Section titled “Folder organization”Documents live in a nested folder hierarchy. There’s no limit to nesting depth — you can have folders inside folders inside folders as deep as your project needs.
- Create folders via the folder icon in the sidebar toolbar. The new folder auto-enters rename mode so you can name it immediately.
- Nest folders by dragging one folder onto another, or by creating new folders inside an already-selected folder.
- Move documents by dragging them onto folders, or via the right-click “Move to Folder…” menu.
- Move folders by dragging them to reparent. All their contents come along.
- Filter by folder by clicking any folder to show only its contents. Click “All Documents” at the top of the sidebar to clear the filter and see everything.
- Delete folders with a choice of whether to delete the contained documents or just remove the folder structure and keep the documents at the parent level.
Folders are for the author’s organizational preferences. They don’t affect anything else in Ishvana — the outline system, the Legendry, the agents, none of them care which folder a document lives in. Folders exist purely so the sidebar stays readable as the project grows.
Books and series
Section titled “Books and series”Above folders in the sidebar hierarchy, you’ll also see Books and Series — these are structural items from the Outline system, not regular folders. They’re created via the “New Book” or “New Series” toolbar buttons and they appear as top-level entries in the sidebar. Documents can be linked to specific outline nodes within a book, which is how the editor knows about word count targets and the outline position of the current document.
The distinction matters: folders are purely organizational, books and series are structural. A book contains chapters, scenes, and beats that can be linked to documents. A folder just contains documents.
Search
Section titled “Search”The sidebar search box has two modes that trigger based on what you type:
- Title filter (1-2 characters) — filters documents by title instantly, no delay. Best for “I know the file’s name, I just don’t want to scroll.”
- Semantic search (3+ characters, with a brief pause) — searches by meaning rather than by title match. Best for “I know what the document is about but I don’t remember what I called it.”
Semantic search is the powerful one. Type “the scene where Kent confronts his father” and the search finds the matching document even if the filename is chapter-8-draft-2.docx. It uses the same ChromaDB semantic search layer that powers the rest of Ishvana — see Semantic Search in the engine section for the conceptual background.
Clear the search box to return to the full document list.
Every document can carry any number of tags. Add them via the tag input below the document title in the editor — type a tag and press Enter or comma to add it. Tags appear as removable chips.
Filter the sidebar by tag by clicking any tag in the sidebar. Multiple tags compose as AND — selected tags must all be present on a document for it to show. This lets you filter to “documents tagged draft AND chapter-one” to find all early-draft chapters at once.
Status tags
Section titled “Status tags”Five special status tags display as colored dots in the sidebar for at-a-glance progress tracking:
| Tag | Meaning |
|---|---|
| draft | Initial work — first draft, unedited |
| in_progress | Actively being written or edited |
| revision | Under revision pass |
| done | Completed and approved |
| published | Shipped |
The status tags aren’t enforced — you don’t have to use them, and you can skip tags entirely if you don’t care about them. But if you use them consistently, the colored dots give you a visual progress map across your whole manuscript that no other view gives you. Especially useful during revision passes where different chapters are in different states.
Sorting
Section titled “Sorting”Sort the document list by any of:
- Modified (newest first) — the default, most useful for returning to whatever you were last working on.
- Created (newest first) — useful for finding recent additions.
- Name A-Z or Z-A — alphabetical.
- Word count (highest first) — good for finding the longest chapters when you’re doing structural work.
Your sort preference persists between sessions. Once you pick one, it stays picked until you change it.
The document outline
Section titled “The document outline”When a document is open, the sidebar switches from showing the full document list to showing an outline view — the heading structure (H1/H2/H3) of the current document. Click any heading to scroll the editor to that position. When you close the document, the sidebar switches back to the document list.
Most fiction uses Heading 1 and Heading 2 sparingly (for scene breaks or chapter-internal section markers), so the outline view is usually short. For structural documents like planning notes, character sheets, or outlines-written-as-prose, the outline view gets more use because the document has more heading structure to navigate.
Legend sidebar
Section titled “Legend sidebar”A third sidebar view shows the Legend — lore entries scoped to the current book or series. Access it via the sidebar view toggle. This is useful when you’re writing and you need to quickly look up a character or location without leaving the editor context. The Legend view shows only the entries relevant to the current book, so you’re not scrolling through 500 Legendry entries to find the one you need.
Context menu
Section titled “Context menu”Right-click any document in the sidebar for:
- Open — open in the editor.
- Rename — start editing the title in place.
- Move to Folder… — submenu listing every folder.
- Export — export the document to DOCX, PDF, Markdown, HTML, or plain text.
- Duplicate — create a copy for forking or experimentation.
- Delete — remove with confirmation.
Right-click a folder for similar operations scoped to the folder. Right-click on empty space for the “New Document” and “New Folder” shortcuts without having to navigate to the toolbar.
Import and export
Section titled “Import and export”Both operations live under their own dedicated page. Import brings in existing work from DOCX, Markdown, text, PDFs, and a few other formats. Export converts documents in the reverse direction. See Import & Export for the full reference.