md-manuscript/README.md

md-manuscript

A small desktop application for Debian that treats a directory of markdown files as an ordered manuscript.

• Left pane — every *.md file in the workspace, as a collapsible folder tree, in a manual order you set by dragging the ⠿ handle up and down. Drag a file onto a folder to move it there. Hover a file to see a tooltip built from its header — the POV: line and the # Slug: synopsis — a quick at-a-glance summary of each chapter.
• Right pane — a markdown text editor for the selected file (optional live preview via the Preview checkbox).
• Order + contents are saved and version-controlled with git. The order lives in order.json inside the workspace, so it syncs along with the files. It records each file's path, so subfolders travel with it.
• Export the whole manuscript as a single concatenated .odt file, with a chapter heading before each file's content.
• Start a new project from a cookiecutter template (File ▸ New project…), which builds the whole folder structure and opens its drafting folder.

Built in Rust with egui/eframe. The ODT writer is native (no pandoc/LibreOffice needed at runtime).

Build

cargo build --release
# binary: target/release/md-manuscript

Requires a Rust toolchain. The GUI needs a normal desktop session (X11 or Wayland) with OpenGL — the usual runtime libraries on Debian:

sudo apt install libgl1 libxkbcommon0 libwayland-client0 libx11-6

(Only needed to run the GUI; building does not require them.)

Install

install -Dm755 target/release/md-manuscript ~/.local/bin/md-manuscript

Optionally add a desktop launcher at ~/.local/share/applications/md-manuscript.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=md-manuscript
Exec=md-manuscript
Categories=Office;TextEditor;
Terminal=false

Use

1. Set the Workspace path in the top bar (default: ~/Manuscript) — type it, or click 📂 to pick a folder in a native file browser — and press Open. The directory is created if it does not exist.

2. Press Init git once to make the workspace a git repository. To sync with another machine, add a remote yourself:

   cd ~/Manuscript
   git remote add origin <url>
   git push -u origin main
   

   After that, the ⟳ Sync (git) button commits all changes, pull --rebases, and pushes.

   If you open a folder that is not itself a repository but sits inside one (a parent directory is a git work tree), the app asks whether to use the enclosing repository. Accept it to have ⟳ Sync commit and push to that repo; decline to leave the workspace on its own, where Init git creates a separate repository in the folder.

3. Create files with ＋ New (type a name first — give it a path like part-1/ch-01 to nest it, see Organising with folders) or ＋ New from template (no name needed — see New files from a template), edit on the right, Ctrl+S (or the Save button) to write to disk. Drag the ⠿ handles to reorder or to move between folders. Use the Zoom slider above the editor to scale the editor text (0% = default; Reset returns to it), and the Contrast slider to brighten dim editor text (0% = theme default; higher pushes the text toward white in dark mode / black in light mode). Text always wraps to the pane width, so there is no horizontal scrolling. Inline markdown has keyboard shortcuts, applied to the current selection (press again on wrapped text to remove the markers):

   Shortcut	Effect
   Ctrl/Cmd + B	bold (**…**)
   Ctrl/Cmd + I	italic (*…*)
   Ctrl/Cmd + E	inline code
   Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + X	strikethrough (~~…~~)
   Ctrl/Cmd + K	link — [selection](url), with url selected to replace

   Press Ctrl/Cmd + F (or Edit ▸ Find / Replace…) to open the find/replace bar above the editor; Ctrl/Cmd + H opens it with the replace field focused. Type a search term to shade every match in the editor (the current one brighter); Enter / Shift+Enter (or ▼ / ▲) step through them, wrapping around, and scroll the match into view. Aa toggles case sensitivity. Replace swaps the current match and advances; Replace all swaps every match in the file at once. Esc closes the bar.

4. Set the Chapter title for the open file if you want to override the auto-derived one (the field shows the automatic title as a hint). Leaving it blank falls back to a # Title: line in the header, and if there is none, to the chapter's position in the left pane followed by a period (1., 2., …). Tick Zero-pad # in the top bar to pad those numbered titles with leading zeros to a uniform width (e.g. 03. when there are 12 chapters). Titles are saved to titles.json and sync with git.

5. Set the Export path (type it, or click 📂 to choose the .odt file in a native save dialog) and press Export ODT to produce the concatenated document. Each file becomes a chapter headed by its title, optionally followed by a caption from its # Slug: line. Every chapter starts on a new page (the first chapter excepted, so there is no blank leading page).

The status bar shows a live word count for the current file, plus the net words added (or removed) to it since the current session started. The count updates as you type, including unsaved edits.

Per-file word-count targets

Give a file a target by adding a Word Count Target: line to its header (at any heading level):

## Word Count Target: 1500 - 2000

A progress bar then appears in two places, comparing the file's prose word count (the body below the draft marker, so header metadata isn't counted) against the target: amber while under the target, green once inside the range, blue when over it.

• A compact bar beside the file name in the left pane, so you can scan every chapter's progress at a glance (hover it for the exact words / target). It updates live as you type in the open file, and reflects the last saved state for the others.
• A larger, labelled bar in the status bar for the file you're currently editing.

A single number (## Word Count Target: 1800) sets a point goal; ranges accept -, –, to, and grouped digits (1,500). Like the other header lines, the target is stripped from the exported document.

Organising with folders

The file list is a tree. Any *.md file at or below the workspace is part of the manuscript, so you can group a long book into part-1/, part-2/, or go further and give a chapter its own folder of scenes — nesting goes eight levels deep.

• Make a folder by giving a new file a path: type part-1/ch-01 beside ＋ New and both the folder and the file appear. There are no standalone empty folders — a folder exists for as long as it holds a file, and is cleaned up automatically once its last file leaves.
• Collapse or expand a folder by clicking its header. The number beside the name counts every file beneath it, at any depth.
• Move a file by dragging its ⠿ handle onto a folder header, or in among another folder's files. The file really moves on disk, taking its chapter-title override with it. Drop it on ↥ drop here for the top level to bring it back out of every folder.
• Move by typing instead, if you prefer: the Rename box holds the file's whole path within the workspace, so editing the folder part of it moves the file just as dragging does.
• ＋ New from template puts its untitled-N.md in the folder of the file you are editing, so working inside a part doesn't scatter new files at the top.

Folders are skipped when they cannot hold manuscript prose: anything starting with a . (so .git is never walked), plus target/ and node_modules/.

Folders and the manuscript order

Order is still yours to set by dragging, and still lives in order.json — as paths (part-1/ch-03.md) rather than bare names. The one rule the app enforces is that a folder's files stay together: a folder sits wherever its earliest-ordered file puts it, and everything under it follows in a block.

That is what keeps the panel honest — the export is the tree read top to bottom, so the order you see down the left is the order the chapters are concatenated in, folders and all. Chapter numbering follows the same sequence, so a defaulted title in part-2/ continues counting from part-1/.

New projects from a cookiecutter template

File ▸ ✨ New project… scaffolds a whole manuscript project from a cookiecutter template and then opens its drafting folder as the workspace, so you go from nothing to editing chapters in one step.

The dialog asks for a name, author, description and the folder to create it in (prefilled with wherever you put the last one). Those are passed to the template as the project_name, author and description variables. Nothing is written until you press Create; generation runs in the background, so a template whose hooks talk to the network doesn't freeze the editor.

When it finishes, the app opens the project's 06-First Draft subfolder as the workspace — that is where the snowflake template keeps the chapter files, in Act 1/, Act 2/ and Act 3/ subfolders that the folder tree shows directly. If the template didn't produce that folder, the project root is opened instead and the status bar says so.

A folder only appears in the file panel once it holds a .md file — the template's empty acts are held open with .gitkeep, which is not markdown, so they show up as you add scenes to them.

Settings ▸ New project…

Setting	Meaning
Template	the folder holding the template's cookiecutter.json. Defaults to ~/Documents/Cookiecutters/snowflake; the dialog confirms whether a cookiecutter.json is actually there
Open subfolder	which folder of the generated project becomes the workspace (default 06-First Draft; blank opens the project root)
cookiecutter path	leave blank to search PATH and then the usual per-user Python prefixes (~/.anaconda3/bin, ~/miniconda3/bin, ~/.local/bin, …), which is what a desktop launcher needs since it does not inherit a conda PATH. The dialog shows which executable was found
Run the template's hooks	whether to run the template's pre/post-generation scripts (on by default)
Gitea	server URL, user and token, handed to the hooks as GITEA_URL / GITEA_USER / GITEA_TOKEN

Cookiecutter is a Python program and is not bundled — install it with pip install cookiecutter or conda install cookiecutter if the settings window reports it missing.

Hooks and publishing

The snowflake template's hooks/post_gen_project.py creates a repository on a Gitea server and pushes the new project to it. It only does that when all three Gitea settings are filled in; with any of them blank it prints a note and skips, and the project is still generated either way. The token is passed to the push command alone and is not written into the project's .git/config.

The token is stored in config.json in plain text, the same as the Mistral API key.

New files from a template

The file list has two create buttons:

Button	Name	Contents
＋ New	the name you type beside it, optionally with folders	# <name> and a blank line
＋ New from template	auto-assigned untitled-N.md	the configured template

＋ New from template takes no typed name — it picks the first free untitled-N.md (reusing a gap if you have deleted one) in the folder of the file you are currently editing, seeds it from the template, adds it to the manuscript order and selects it. Rename it later with the Rename box, or set a # Title: header and let the chapter title come from that.

Edit the template under Settings ▸ New-file template…. The built-in default is:

# Title: {{name}}
# Slug:
# POV:
# Word Count Target:

### Rough Draft:

Three placeholders are expanded when the file is created:

Placeholder	Expands to
{{name}}	the file stem, e.g. untitled-3
{{marker}}	the draft marker set in the top bar (default ### Rough Draft:)
{{date}}	today's date in UTC, as YYYY-MM-DD

Anything else in double braces is left alone. Using {{marker}} rather than typing the marker literally keeps the template working if you change the marker later. Emptying the box restores the built-in default, and Reset to default does the same in one click.

The template is stored in ~/.config/md-manuscript/config.json, so it is shared by every workspace on the machine rather than committed with a manuscript.

Spelling (offline)

Spelling is checked live as you type, entirely offline — no server, no network. Misspelled words get a red underline; right-click one for a menu of suggested corrections (click a suggestion to apply it). It uses Hunspell dictionaries read by the pure-Rust spellbook crate, so the binary stays self-contained.

• Two dictionaries are built in — Canadian English (en-CA, the default) and British English (en-GB). Pick one from the Dictionary dropdown on the Spelling row of the top bar; the choice is remembered.
• More languages are discovered automatically from the usual Hunspell folders (/usr/share/hunspell, /usr/share/myspell, …) and from a per-user folder, ~/.config/md-manuscript/dictionaries/. Drop a matching xx_YY.aff + xx_YY.dic pair in there (e.g. from your distro's hunspell-de-de package) and it appears in the dropdown.
• Untick “Check as I type” on the Spelling row to turn the underlines off.
• Code spans, fenced/indented code blocks and link targets are skipped, and ALL-CAPS initialisms (ODT, HTTP) are left alone, to cut false positives.

When you run a LanguageTool check (below), its richer spelling-and-grammar results take over the underlines until you next edit the text — at which point the live offline checker resumes. In other words, LanguageTool is used when it's available and current; the offline checker is the always-on default.

The bundled dictionaries live under dictionaries/ and are derived from SCOWL under a permissive license (kept alongside them in each license file).

Plot beats (Mistral)

Tools ▸ ✨ Generate plot beats (Mistral)… turns a rough novel proposal into a structured set of plot beats laid out in the classic three-act structure, using the Mistral chat API.

1. Open Settings ▸ Mistral… once and paste your API key (from console.mistral.ai). You can also set the Model (default mistral-large-latest) and the Base URL (default https://api.mistral.ai, handy if you route through a proxy). The settings are remembered.
2. Choose Tools ▸ Generate plot beats… and pick a markdown (or text) file describing the novel. Anything the file states is read and honoured — the title, setting, genre, tone, characters, target age (adult, young adult, …), and a loose plot summary; the beats follow the genre's conventions, keep the tone, and stay age-appropriate. Missing attributes are inferred from the rest. The request runs in the background, so the editor stays responsive.
3. The result opens in a floating window with the beats grouped under Act I — Setup, Act II — Confrontation, and Act III — Resolution, each a numbered list. You can edit the text in place, then:
   • 💾 Save as new file — writes <proposal> — beats.md into the workspace (auto-numbered if that name is taken) and opens it in the editor, or
   • ⧉ Copy — copies the beats to the clipboard.

Filling in an act you haven't written

If the proposal is already partly beaten out, the generator switches to a different brief: instead of producing a whole sheet, it writes only the acts you are missing and leaves the ones you have written alone.

It counts the numbered beats under each act heading it finds (### Act One:, ## Act 2, # Act III — Resolution — the notation doesn't matter). An act with three or more beats is treated as drafted; anything fewer, or an act you never mention, is treated as still to write. If at least one act is drafted and at least one is not, you get the fill-the-gaps brief.

So a proposal whose Act One and Act Three are beaten out in detail and whose Act Two is a note saying "this is what I need help with" sends this:

It is already partly beaten out:
- Act One: 11 beats already drafted — context only
- Act Two: write this one
- Act Three: 10 beats already drafted — context only

Write only the missing act(s), under exactly these headings:
  ### Act Two

Do not output the drafted acts.

Why it matters: the full-sheet brief tells the model to aim for four to eight beats per act, which would compress an act you had already written to eleven. The fill-the-gaps brief drops that cap, tells the model to match the density of your drafted acts, and treats them as canon — including any reveal that lands in a later act, which it must work backwards from and plant for. It also reuses your own heading text and depth, so what comes back drops straight into your document.

The result is labelled accordingly: the status line says which acts were written, the saved file is named <proposal> — beats Two.md rather than <proposal> — beats.md, and its title says which acts it contains — so a partial sheet is never mistaken for a whole one.

To force a full three-act regeneration anyway, run it against a copy of the proposal with the act headings removed.

The chosen proposal text is sent to Mistral to generate the beats; nothing else in your workspace is transmitted. The API key is stored in the app's config file in plain text. Because the request uses the pure-Rust ureq/rustls stack, the binary stays self-contained.

Grammar & spelling (LanguageTool)

The editor can additionally check the current file against a LanguageTool server — typically a local instance, so your manuscript never leaves your machine.

1. Run a LanguageTool server. The standalone server listens on http://localhost:8010 by default (the official Docker image uses :8081 — just point the app at whichever you run):

   # Standalone (needs Java):
   java -cp 'languagetool-server.jar' org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer --port 8010
   # or via Docker:
   docker run -d -p 8010:8010 --entrypoint java \
     erikvl87/languagetool -cp languagetool-server.jar \
     org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer --port 8010 --allow-origin '*'
   

2. Open Settings ▸ LanguageTool… (from the menu bar, or the ⚙ button on the Grammar row) and set the connection:

   • Scheme — http for a local server, https for a remote one (TLS is supported).
   • Host / domain — an IP address or hostname (default localhost).
   • Port — the server's port (default 8010).
   • Token — optional; sent as an Authorization: Bearer header for a server behind an auth proxy, or a premium API key. Leave blank for an unauthenticated local server.
   • Language — auto to detect, or a code like en-US, en-GB, de-DE.

   Press Test connection to confirm the settings reach a working server. All fields are remembered in the config.

3. Open a file and press ✓ Check. The check runs in the background (the UI stays responsive) and issues appear two ways:

   • Underlines in the editor — red for spelling, blue for grammar/style.
   • A "Grammar & spelling" panel at the bottom listing each issue with its explanation and suggested fixes. Click a suggestion to apply it; the remaining underlines re-align automatically.

Editing the text after a check hides the underlines (their positions would no longer be accurate) and disables the fix buttons until you re-check. The checker sends the raw file text, so occasional markdown tokens (e.g. a # heading marker) may be flagged.

Header stripping on export

Manuscript files often carry editorial notes and metadata above the prose that should not appear in the finished document. On export, each file is cleaned up:

• HTML comments (<!-- ... -->, including multi-line ones) are removed.

• The header block — everything above the Draft marker line (set in the top bar; default ### Rough Draft:) — is dropped. From that header:

  • # Title: becomes the chapter heading (unless a manual override is set), and
  • # Slug: becomes an italic caption printed beneath the heading.

  Any other header text is discarded. Files with no marker line are exported whole, but stray # Title: / # Slug: lines are still lifted out. Clear the Draft marker field to disable header splitting entirely.

For example, this source file:

# Title: The Gate
# Slug: in which the door will not open
<!-- remember to foreshadow the key -->
outline: she arrives, she knocks, nothing

### Rough Draft:

The prose that actually gets exported begins here.

exports as a chapter titled The Gate, captioned in which the door will not open, containing only the prose below the marker.

Field-name autocomplete

While typing a header line above the draft marker — #, ##, … followed by the start of a field name — a small popup suggests matching field names. Press Tab or Enter (or click) to insert the field and its ": ", ↑/↓ to change the highlighted suggestion, and Esc to dismiss. The suggestions include common fields (Title, Slug, POV, Word Count Target, Characters, Setting, Conflict, …) plus any field names it learns from the headers of your other files, so your own conventions autocomplete too. It only triggers in the header region, never in the prose below the marker.

Files the app writes

Location	Purpose
<workspace>/**/*.md	your manuscript files, in folders if you like
<workspace>/order.json	the manual ordering, as paths (committed to git)
<workspace>/titles.json	chapter-title overrides, keyed by path (committed to git)
~/.config/md-manuscript/config.json	last workspace, export path, prefs, new-file template, project/Gitea settings

Markdown supported in ODT export

Headings, paragraphs, bold, italic, both, inline code, fenced/indented code blocks (monospace, whitespace preserved), strikethrough, ordered and unordered (nested) lists, block quotes, horizontal rules, and links. Images are rendered as a text placeholder (not embedded).

A quick reference for all of this — plus the chapter metadata, draft-marker header, and comment conventions — is built in: open Help ▸ Markdown cheatsheet from the menu bar.