This page covers the story bible: the wiki of characters, places and everything else your book stands on, how pages link and relate to each other, the Graph, labels, working on many pages at once, renaming and merging, the trash, flags and the health check, pictures, and what MechaSquid files for you.
The wiki is your world
Choose Wiki in the menu. The wiki holds what your book is about: its people, places, groups, things and lore, one page each, tied to each other and to the scenes they appear in.
In MechaSquid the wiki belongs to the world, not to one book. Most authors have one book and never need to think about it. If you write a series, a prequel or a spin-off in the same world, every book shares the one wiki, Atlas and Timeline, while each keeps its own chapters and scenes (Planning).
The kinds of page are character, place, faction, item, lore (the background that holds a world together: history, magic, customs), event, plot thread and map. Scenes, chapters and books are not in the wiki: they open in the Manuscript.
The list on the left shows By type, with All for every kind together, and a sort: A to Z, Most important, In most scenes or Last changed. Tree shows places inside places and members of factions, built from those relationships. Type in "Find a page by name…" to find any page by its name or other names, whatever kind is selected. The search in the middle, Search by meaning, finds pages by what they are about rather than their names ("who owes the guild money"); a new page joins it a few minutes after it is saved.
Make a page
With a kind chosen, type a name in the box under the list ("New character…") and press +. Suggest, beside the box for a character, place or faction, offers eight made-up names that sound like a language your world already uses; choose another language, feminine or masculine, or A few more, and click one to put it in the box. Nothing is stored until you make the page.
You can also make a page from your text: select a name, choose Link, and choose + New page (Writing). A link to a page that does not exist yet raises a flag that offers to create it.
A page's text is always editable and saves by itself. Its right panel holds its pictures, relationships, comments, ideas and history, and "Appears in": the scenes it shows up in, by book and chapter.
Other names and importance
Details, at the top of a page, holds its title, kind, importance and Also called: other names, separated by commas ("the captain, the old man"). MechaSquid links other names too, and Go to and the wiki's box find a page by them.
Importance is minor, normal or major. It shows as dots in the wiki's list, orders the list when you sort by Most important, and sizes the page on the Graph.
Archive a page
Archive, at the foot of a page, hides it from the wiki's lists and the Graph and keeps its links working. The list keeps archived pages under Archived with a count; open one and choose Bring it back. Archive is for a page you are done with but might want again; to take a page out of the world, move it to the trash (below).
Links and names becoming links
A link in your text is what ties a scene to a page: once a scene links to a character, the character "appears in" it, the Graph and the Timeline know it, and Look up lists it while you write.
You rarely need to link by hand. A few minutes after a page or scene is saved, MechaSquid links the first mention of each page's name in it. Names it is less sure of wait as suggestions, underlined, for you to accept or dismiss. When you make a new page, or rename one, the older text is searched again, so earlier mentions find it. Writing explains the suggestions and the setting that controls them.
Renaming a page never breaks a link: links follow the page, not its name.
Relationships
A relationship says how two pages relate: someone knows someone, a place is in a region, a character is a member of a faction, owns a thing, causes an event, or is in conflict with someone. A page lists its relationships in plain sentences under Relationships, with mentions (pages its text links to) marked as such.
- To add one, choose + Add under Relationships, pick the other page by name (or make it), then choose the kind, a few words, and optionally from when until when in the story it holds.
- MechaSquid also reads relationships your text states ("one of the Three Dukes") a few minutes after you save. The ones it is sure of are added and marked as read by MechaSquid; the rest wait as suggestions beside the name suggestions. This is the setting "Fill summaries and read relationships automatically" in Settings.
The Graph
Graph shows the world five ways, switched in its header:
- Journey: one character through the book, scene by scene. It opens on the busiest character.
- On stage: which characters are in which scenes.
- Focus: one page and everything tied to it, grouped by kind of relationship.
- Cause: only what causes what and who is in conflict with whom, left to right.
- Web: every page at once, sized by importance, with its picture inside. Fit the web on the screen brings it all into view.
Click a card to open the page at the side, where you can read and edit it, follow it, or open it in full. To tie two pages, drag the ⊕ on one card onto another card; on the Web, Shift-drag from one page to the other. As of shows the world at one moment of the story: the relationships that hold then and the scenes that have happened by then. In the side panel, Path to… shows how two pages are connected, and Ask my assistant copies a ready request about them for your own AI assistant.
Labels
Labels are your own words for groups of pages, scenes, chapters and ideas: "needs research", "check dates", "cut?". MechaSquid never sets one and never reads meaning into one.
- To add one, choose + label under a page's title, on a card in Cards or on a row of the Outline, and type a word or pick one you used before. × on a label takes it off that page.
- Click a label anywhere to see everything that carries it, on the Labels page: scenes as the book reads, then world pages A to Z, then ideas.
- On the Labels page, click a label's name to rename it everywhere. Typing the name of another label joins the two into one, which cannot be undone, so it asks for Enter first. Remove from every page takes it off them all.
- The Wiki's list, Cards, the Outline, Plot, Ideas and the Timeline have a label filter. The filter is part of the page's address, so bookmark a filtered view to come back to it.
A story line you want to follow through the book is better as a plot thread, which has its own row in the Plot view.
Work on several pages at once
In the Wiki's list, the Outline, Cards and the Labels page you can select several things and act on them together. ⌘-click on a Mac (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux) adds one to the selection or takes it out; Shift-click selects every one from the one clicked before. On a touch screen, choose Select first, then tap. Esc clears the selection.
A bar at the bottom offers only what applies to everything selected: Add label and Remove label…, Archive or Bring back, Merge… for exactly two pages, for scenes Move to chapter…, Accept and the five faces, and Move to the trash…, which puts them in the trash together so one Restore brings them all back. Pages in a published book are left alone, and the bar says how many.
Find everywhere and Rename everywhere
Find everywhere searches every scene, page and idea and can replace across all of them in one change you can undo; it is explained in Writing. Open it with ⇧⌘F on a Mac (Ctrl+Shift+F on Windows and Linux), or Search the whole book… under the wiki's box.
Renaming a character or a place changes its title, but the old name may still be written as words in your scenes. Rename everywhere…, in a page's Details, changes the title and lists every place the old name is written:
- The old name written as plain words, and the words of links to this page, are ticked; links to other pages that happen to use the same words are listed unticked.
- Links that show the page's name follow the new name by themselves.
- Keep "the old name" as another name makes MechaSquid keep linking the old name to this page: right for a name the story still uses, wrong for a mistake.
The whole change is one step: Undo in the message that follows, or on the Revisions page, puts the texts back (the title stays). After any rename, from anywhere, a line under the page's title says where the old name is still written, with a way to change them.
Merge two pages
Sometimes two pages turn out to be the same person or place, often after an import. Merge with another page…, at the foot of a page, asks for the other page, then which one stays (its name stays, and the other's becomes another name), the kind if they differ, and the text when both have some: both, or one. It says what will follow before you confirm.
Relationships, comments, pictures, ideas, map pins and the links in every text move to the page that stays, and the other page goes to the trash. Undo the link changes is in the message that follows and on the Revisions page; Restore in the trash brings the other page back. The health check offers Merge… when two pages share a name, and two selected pages offer it in the bar.
The trash
Deleting a page, a scene or a chapter moves it to the trash, where it waits 30 days before it is erased. Each delete ends with the message "Moved to the trash", with Undo and a way to open the trash. On a page, Move to the trash… first says how many pages link to it: those links show as missing until it comes back.
The Trash page is reached from that message, from Go to, and from "Trash" at the foot of the wiki's list and of the Manuscript's contents when it holds something. Restore puts each thing back as it was: its text, history, pictures, relationships and comments, a scene in its chapter, and links to it work again. Delete for good erases one at once, and Empty the trash erases everything in it; both ask first.
Maps, whole books and comments do not go to the trash: removing one asks first, and is for good.
Flags and the health check
A flag is something that may not hold together: a link to a page that does not exist, a character in two places at the same moment, or a contradiction MechaSquid or your AI assistant noticed. Flags lists them. Each says what it is about, the words it concerns, and what to do. Click the words' page to open it with them underlined and the flag beside the text. In Write mode, the right panel's Flags tab shows the scene's flags.
When you have fixed it, choose Resolve; if it is not a problem, Dismiss. A missing page and a character in two places at once clear by themselves once fixed.
Below the flags, the health check looks at the shape of the world as it is now: for example two pages with the same name, or two characters in conflict who never share a scene. Not a problem leaves a finding out of the check, the Graph and what your assistant is told; the list of those findings brings any back.
Pictures on pages
Any page can carry pictures: a portrait, a place, a map, the cover on the book's page. The first picture a page gets is its main picture, shown on the page, the Graph and its cards; Make it the main picture changes it. In the page's right panel, under Pictures:
- + Upload adds your own: PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 8 MB each. Uploads are not counted against your monthly pictures.
- Commons… finds photographs and paintings of real places like this one on Wikimedia Commons, free to use with credit. The credit is kept with the picture and shown with it.
- Generate… makes one with MechaSquid's built-in model. The prompt is written from the page's own text and shown in full for you to change before anything is made. Choose a picture style, colours, up to three reference pictures to keep a subject the same, and a shape. The dialog says how many pictures are left this month.
Your AI assistant can also add pictures to a page, and to put a picture inside a text, use the picture icon in the toolbar.
Picture styles
Styles, in the World part of the menu, holds the looks your world's pictures are made in, so they belong together: one to three styles, say one for the cover and one for the pages. Choose + Add a style, start from a look or write your own, then change its name and words and Save. When you make a picture, its dialog offers these styles, the one the page was last painted in first. Colours are not part of a style: you choose them for each picture.
Process: what MechaSquid files for you
After a writing session, new and changed scenes wait to be tidied. A line such as "2 new scenes to tidy" appears in Write mode's header, in the Manuscript and under Needs you on the Overview. Tidying gives each scene a title if it has none, links to the characters and places it names, a summary, a consistency check, and a copyedit you accept or reject. A scene that holds more than one place, stretch of time or set of characters is divided into scenes, without changing a word. It only fills gaps: a title, a time or a point of view you set is never overwritten, contradictions become flags, and nothing in your prose changes without you.
Click the line for two ways to do it. With your own agent (recommended): copy the request and paste it to your AI assistant:
Process my new writing in MechaSquid. Call help with topic intake first and follow it, then tell me what you filed and what needs my decision.
Or with the built-in model: Process now. To have it run by itself whenever you leave Write mode, turn on "Process new writing automatically" in Settings.
What uses the built-in AI
Most of MechaSquid uses no AI at all: writing, links and name suggestions, the Graph, the Timeline, labels, finding, exports, and everything your own AI assistant does (which runs on your own assistant's account).
A few things use MechaSquid's own built-in model and count against a monthly allowance:
- the summaries and relationships read after you save (the Settings switch "Fill summaries and read relationships automatically" turns them off),
- Process now,
- letting MechaSquid read an imported book and describe its pages,
- searching the wiki by meaning and Find a word,
- reading the place names on a map you uploaded (Maps and travel),
- generating pictures, which have their own monthly number, shown in the dialog.
When the allowance runs out, these wait until next month. Your writing, your own assistant and your exports are never held back.