The Editor
The editor is where the actual writing happens, and for a feature that sounds simple — “a text area you type in” — there’s more going on underneath than you’d think. Smart quotes. Auto-save every two seconds. Entity highlighting that links characters and places to their Legendry entries. Slash commands that call Hawken without leaving the keyboard. Find and replace with match counts. Two immersive writing modes that work together for zero-distraction sessions. Rich formatting that stays out of your way until you ask for it. Word count targets that sync with your outline. Status tags that show up in the sidebar. This page walks through all of it, in rough order of how often you’ll actually use each feature, so you know what’s available without having to stumble into it mid-chapter.
The one thing worth knowing before anything else: the editor is built on TipTap, which means the underlying formatting model is standard rich text — bold, italic, lists, headings, tables, the whole usual set. If you’ve used any modern rich-text editor, nothing below will surprise you. The interesting parts are the agent integration and the ways the editor knows about your project data.
Formatting
Section titled “Formatting”Text marks
Section titled “Text marks”Most of these have keyboard shortcuts because you’ll use them constantly:
- Bold (Ctrl+B), Italic (Ctrl+I), Underline (Ctrl+U)
- Strikethrough (Ctrl+Shift+X)
- Highlight (Ctrl+Shift+H) — multiple colors via the picker
- Subscript and Superscript via the Format dropdown
- Text color — color palette picker
- Font family and font size — from the Format dropdown
- Clear formatting — strips all marks and resets to plain paragraph
Smart quotes, em dashes, and ellipses apply automatically as you type. If you want a straight quote you have to paste it in; the editor won’t let you type one directly. This is deliberate — the typographic defaults match what a professional book would print.
Paragraph styles
Section titled “Paragraph styles”Paragraph, Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3 from the paragraph style dropdown in the toolbar. Most fiction only uses Paragraph and maybe an occasional Heading for scene breaks. Heading levels matter more for non-fiction or for structural documents like chapter outlines.
Text alignment
Section titled “Text alignment”Left, Center, Right, and Justify — in the Format dropdown for both headings and paragraphs. Most fiction stays left-aligned. Center is for epigraphs. Justify is for print-ready manuscripts when you’re using Bookmaker to produce a PDF.
- Bullet list (Ctrl+Shift+8)
- Ordered list (Ctrl+Shift+7)
- Task list — checkable to-do items with nested support
Task lists are more useful than they look. Use them in planning documents, character sheets, or beat-by-beat outlines where you want to track completion state.
Block elements
Section titled “Block elements”- Blockquote (Ctrl+Shift+B) — indented block for quotes or emphasis.
- Code block — syntax-highlighted code fencing, useful for scripts, technical fiction, or anything where monospaced formatting matters.
- Horizontal rule — a scene or section divider. Most authors use this between scenes within a chapter.
- Mermaid diagrams — rendered diagram blocks. Useful for plot graphs, character relationship maps, or timeline visualizations embedded in planning documents.
Tables
Section titled “Tables”Insert a table from the Insert dropdown. When your cursor is inside a table, a context toolbar appears with controls for adding or deleting rows and columns, toggling the header row, merging or splitting cells, and deleting the whole table. Tables are most useful for structured reference documents — character stat blocks, scene schedules, comparison grids — not for prose.
Links and images
Section titled “Links and images”Insert both from the Insert dropdown. One quirk worth knowing: links in the editor don’t navigate when clicked. You can’t accidentally click out of the document because you’re writing a paragraph about a real website. If you want to actually open a link, right-click for the context menu.
Images support inline placement and zoom to full size when clicked.
Find and replace
Section titled “Find and replace”Two variants:
- Find (Ctrl+F) — opens the find bar with match highlighting, match count, and previous/next navigation.
- Find and Replace (Ctrl+H) — adds a replace field with replace-current and replace-all buttons.
A case-sensitivity toggle is available on both. Matches are highlighted in the document with the active match in a distinct color. Close the find bar with the close button or Escape.
Find and replace operates on the current document only. For project-wide search across documents, use the Documents panel.
Auto-save
Section titled “Auto-save”Documents save automatically every 2 seconds after you stop typing. The interval is configurable from 0.5 to 10 seconds in Settings → Editor. A status indicator on the toolbar shows the current state:
- Unsaved changes — you’ve edited since the last save.
- Saving — save in progress, usually a fraction of a second.
- Saved — confirmed persistence.
- Error — save failed. If you see this, check Error Tracking to see what went wrong. This almost never happens.
Manual save is Ctrl+S or the toolbar save button, though in practice you’ll rarely use it because auto-save has already caught up. Auto-save also triggers when you navigate away from the editor to another panel, so focus changes never lose work.
Writing modes
Section titled “Writing modes”Two immersive modes that you can toggle independently or combine:
Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+F
Dims all paragraphs except the one your cursor is currently in. Everything else fades to low opacity. The effect is a single-paragraph spotlight that makes it hard to get distracted by the last sentence of the previous paragraph or the first sentence of the next one.
Some authors love it. Some hate it. The only way to know is to try it and see.
Keeps the cursor line vertically centered in the viewport as you type. The document scrolls so your current writing position stays at mid-screen instead of migrating to the bottom of the window as you add more text.
Typewriter mode is the less divisive of the two. Most authors who try it leave it on.
Entity highlighting
Section titled “Entity highlighting”When you write about characters, locations, factions, or other entities that exist in your Legendry, the editor highlights them inline. Hover over a highlighted entity to see its summary. Click to jump to the Legendry entry.
This is more useful than it looks on paper. As your manuscript grows, entity highlighting gives you a visual map of which world elements appear in each scene — you can tell at a glance whether a chapter about a specific character mentions that character enough, or whether a location you want to establish is actually getting page time.
Toggle highlights on or off with the toolbar button. Detection runs after each save and periodically in the background. Common English words are excluded to prevent false positives — “Will” as an auxiliary verb won’t match a character named Will.
Hawken features
Section titled “Hawken features”Four distinct ways to invoke Hawken from the editor, each suited to a different kind of task. Every one of them produces a suggestion you accept, reject, or rework — none of these write into your document on their own.
Slash commands
Section titled “Slash commands”Type / at the start of a line to open the command palette. Commands include:
- Rewrite — suggests an alternate version of the selected text with different word choices and rhythm.
- Extend — suggests an expanded version with more detail or depth around what’s already there.
- Shorten — suggests a tighter version that cuts filler while keeping the core meaning.
- Continue — sketches a rough version of what might come next from where the cursor sits, for you to react against and rewrite.
- Fix Grammar — corrects spelling, grammar, and punctuation without changing your voice.
- Simplify — suggests a version with shorter sentences and simpler language.
- Adjust Tone — shifts the tone of the passage in a direction you specify, as a reference point against your original.
Type after the / to filter the command list. Press Escape to dismiss without running anything.
Mentions
Section titled “Mentions”Type @ to trigger entity autocomplete. Matching names from your Legendry appear as suggestions. Selecting one inserts a styled mention into your document that links back to the entry.
Mentions are useful when you’re writing at speed and don’t want to break flow to look up a character’s name. Type @kent and the character’s full canonical name appears with proper capitalization.
Bubble menu
Section titled “Bubble menu”Select any passage and a floating menu appears with the same options as slash commands — rewrite, extend, shorten, simplify, fix grammar. An overlay blocks editing while Hawken is working, with an abort button to cancel if the suggestion is going wrong. The bubble menu produces a preview you accept or reject. The selection only changes if you accept it.
Hawken panel
Section titled “Hawken panel”Click the Hawken button in the toolbar to open the full panel. This is the heavier interface — a real conversation with Hawken about your scene, your characters, or the direction of a chapter. When the panel surfaces a sketch or a rewrite that’s worth keeping, you can push it into your document at the cursor with one click. Until you push, nothing in your manuscript changes.
See the full Hawken documentation for the deep dive.
Word count and progress
Section titled “Word count and progress”Word count and character count appear in the page metadata area below the title. When a document is linked to an outline node with a target word count set, a progress bar shows how far along you are against the target. The targets come from the outline node’s metadata, set in the Outline view.
Add tags to documents using the tag input below the title. Type a tag and press Enter or comma to add it. Tags appear as removable chips.
A few special status tags display as colored status dots in the document sidebar:
draft— early workin_progress— active editingrevision— in revision passdone— finished, approvedpublished— shipped
These aren’t enforced — you can use any tags you want — but the status tags get special display treatment so you can tell at a glance which documents are at which stage.
Keyboard shortcuts
Section titled “Keyboard shortcuts”| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Save | Ctrl+S |
| Undo | Ctrl+Z |
| Redo | Ctrl+Y |
| 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 |
| Find | Ctrl+F |
| Find & Replace | Ctrl+H |
| Focus Mode | Ctrl+Shift+F |
| Slash commands | / at line start |
| Entity mentions | @ anywhere |
For the full list of Ishvana keyboard shortcuts across every module, see Shortcuts.