MechaSquid keeps your book, its world and its plan. Your AI app (Claude, ChatGPT or another) can read it and work in it while you talk to it, so it knows who everyone is and what you have decided. This page covers connecting it, what to ask, what it may change, and how you stay in charge of every change. Connecting takes a minute.
Connect your AI app
Every app uses the same address, called a connector:
https://mcp.mechasquid.com/mcp
- Claude (on the web, the desktop app and the phone): open the settings for connectors, add a custom connector, and paste the address.
- ChatGPT: in the settings for apps and connectors, add a custom one with the address. ChatGPT may ask you to switch on developer mode first.
- Other apps (Claude Code, Cursor and others): add the address as a remote server in the app's settings for connectors or tools. If an app cannot sign in, give it a key instead (see A key for apps that cannot sign in).
These apps move their menus from time to time, so look for the word "connector" in their settings.
Sign in and allow it
After you add the address, the app sends you to MechaSquid. Sign in, read what the app will be able to do, and choose Allow (or Refuse). If the page warns that it does not recognise the app, check that you started from an app you trust.
One connection reaches all your books. When you have several, tell your assistant which one you mean in the conversation.
Ask it something
Say "in MechaSquid" the first time, so it knows to use it. Copy any of these and change the names.
Start a book:
Start a new book in MechaSquid called [your title]. Give it a three-act shape: plan the chapters and a few scenes in each, with a line saying what each scene is for. Don't write any prose yet.
Your assistant makes the book, its chapters and planned scenes. They appear in the Outline and on the Plot.
Save an idea:
I have an idea for a character: a ferry pilot who can't swim and lies about it. Save it in my book.
It lands in Ideas, and shows up on the pages it mentions.
Build the world:
Write a wiki page for the town where my story begins, from what my chapters say about it: what it looks like, who lives there, what it trades. Link the characters who live there.
A wiki page with links to the people and places it names.
Plan what comes next:
Read my outline and the last chapter. What should happen in the next chapter? Plan three scenes, and ask me before writing anything.
Planned scenes you can drag, rename or delete in the Outline.
Check the story:
Read chapter 3 and tell me if anything contradicts what happened before. Raise a flag for each problem rather than changing my text.
Flags you resolve or dismiss, each with the words it is about.
Read like a beta reader:
Read chapter 4 the way a first reader would. Leave a comment where it drags, confuses or surprises you, and don't change my text.
Comments on the words, listed beside your readers' comments, for you to answer or resolve.
Look something up:
Show me the page for my main character.
In Claude and ChatGPT a small viewer opens in the conversation, with the page's picture, its text and its relationships. Click a name in it to open that page.
You can start on your own as well: everything you write in MechaSquid is there for your assistant whenever it joins.
Decide what your assistant may change
Your assistant can always read your book, capture ideas, raise flags and comment. How much it may change in text it did not write is yours to set, in the book's Settings under Agents and AI, separately for The manuscript (books, chapters and scenes: the words your readers get) and World pages (characters, places, lore, events, ideas). Each has three levels:
- On the website only: it proposes changes, and you accept or reject them in MechaSquid.
- In conversation: it proposes, and accepts or rejects when you tell it to in the conversation, for example from your phone.
- Directly: what it writes applies at once.
Unless you change them, the manuscript is In conversation and world pages are Directly. Whatever you choose, every change is kept under the assistant's name and can be undone, and a published book never changes at any level.
Review a proposed change
Proposed changes wait under Revisions, marked Pending revision with the app's name. In Write mode, a proposal for the scene you are in shows at the top of the Comments tab of the right panel.
A proposal is shown change by change: each changed passage with the paragraph before and after it, and ↑ and ↓ to step through them. Untick Take this change on any you do not want, then Accept takes the rest. Accept and edit takes them and opens the page. Reject refuses the proposal; saying why helps your assistant learn what you do not want.
If you have written in the same scene since the proposal was made, MechaSquid applies only the changes that still fit and keeps what you wrote; it tells you how many fit before you accept. A proposal that answers one of your comments resolves that comment when you accept it.
Undo what your assistant changed
Changes that took effect without your click (at the Directly level, or accepted in conversation) are listed under Revisions, in Applied by your agents. Undo puts the old text back, as long as the page has not changed since. If it has, open the page and use its History in the right panel: any earlier version can be compared with now and put back with Put this back.
See what your assistant did
The book's Overview has What your agents did: each change an assistant made, when, and the pages it touched, each a link. After a while away, Since you were last here also counts what your assistants wrote and commented.
See and disconnect your apps
Your Account page lists every app under Connected apps, with when it was last used. Disconnect stops an app at once. Adding an app again (after removing it in Claude, say) makes a new connection; the one in use is marked, and a button beside it disconnects the unused ones.
A key for apps that cannot sign in
Most people never need this. An app you build yourself, or one that cannot sign in, uses a key instead. Open the book's Settings, find Connect an agent, and open Advanced: a key for an agent that cannot sign in. Give the key a name and choose + Key. Copy it at once: it is shown only this once. A key reaches that one book only. Revoke stops it; your Account page lists your keys too, with Manage.
Keep your assistant in your voice
The Voice page (in the menu, or under More) holds what your assistant reads before it writes for you:
- Your prose: up to three passages of your own writing, to show how you write.
- Measured from this book's scenes: what MechaSquid measures in your text, such as how long your sentences are, how much is dialogue, and the tense and person you write in.
- Rules for this book and Rules for all your books: short lines an assistant can follow, such as tone, what the book is not, decisions already made.
- Suggested by agents: rules your assistant proposes, drawn from changes you rejected or rewrote. Nothing applies until you accept one; you can also dismiss it.
- What your agents will read: the brief exactly as your assistant gets it.
How each character speaks goes in the Voice box on that character's page, under its title.