A writing studio for novels in plain Markdown. ✍️
Try the live demo → The dashboard for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in your browser: read, search, open the analysis, edit a scene, and export the book as an EPUB or a PDF. Nothing to install, and your edits never leave the tab.
Proseview turns a folder of Markdown scenes into a place to write the book: read and edit scenes and story-bible notes on a typeset page, check pacing, prose and character presence, ask Codex or Claude about the manuscript, and export it as an e-book or a print-ready PDF. Your files stay plain Markdown, and a save changes only what you edited.
Core analysis stays on your machine: no account, subscription, database, or telemetry. AI features are opt-in and run through agent CLIs you installed and logged into yourself — Codex or Claude in the side dock. When you use one, Proseview sends the active document by default, plus any selection or attachments, to that agent under its own login and data handling.
Proseview reads plain .md files in whatever layout they already have, so it
sits alongside Obsidian, Vim, or any other Markdown editor.
pipx install "proseview[claude]"
proseview --root /path/to/your/novelLeave off [claude] if you will not use the Claude tab. Quick start →
- 📖 Reading view and WYSIWYG editor. The same typographic page, with
Edittoggled on.Mod-Ssaves; a conflict guard checks the file mtime so a change made in your own editor is never silently overwritten. A save rewrites only the paragraphs you changed. - 📝 Editable notes. Story bible, plans, and any other Markdown file in
the book get the same
EditandSave, with backups and the same conflict guard. Notes with HTML inside their lines are edited as plain Markdown. - 📁 File browser. Create empty Markdown files and folders, rename them inline, or move them to Proseview Trash from the row menu or right-click.
- 🔎 Repository search.
Mod-Kfrom anywhere — paths, metadata, TODOs, notes, and prose, grouped by kind. - 🔁 Live reload, deep links, themes. Save in your editor and the page follows. Every scene has a URL. Six themes, seven fonts.
- 📊 Dashboard. Word count, chapter pacing, lexical health, sentence rhythm, character presence, setting stickiness, and a sortable scene table. What the numbers mean →
- 🎨 Editorial highlights. Nine prose passes over any scene, switched on from the Analysis panel with a match count each: repetition, passive voice, filter verbs, crutch words, hyperbole, lyrical reach, sensory density, comedy beats, first-person rate.
- 🕰️ Timeline. The shape of the book, storylines as lanes, and reading order against the order events happen.
- 🗒️ Inline TODOs and Notes. Select a passage, drop a
TODOor a taggedNOTE, and it lands in the file as a Markdown comment. They stay in the file, so they survive in git and turn up in grep. - 🕹️ File history. Versions of a scene, restored through a diff you can read first.
- 📚 EPUB and PDF export. The Export button turns the whole book, a
chapter, a scene, or any mix of them into a styled e-book, a print-ready
paperback interior (5 × 8 to 6 × 9 in, or A5), or a PDF to share, in four
styles including standard manuscript format for agents. Pick scenes by
status, point of view or character, add a copyright page, dedication and
"Also by" page, preview the pages, and get a plain-language check that the
book is ready for the stores. Nothing else to install;
proseview exportdoes the same from the command line. Export guide → - 🌐 A read-only copy to share.
proseview snapshotwrites the dashboard as a static site for beta readers. Share a read-only copy →
Entirely optional, and it never runs on its own. Proseview has no model of its own and no API key of yours — it drives the agent CLIs already installed on your machine, under your login: Codex and Claude, one tab each in the side dock, each with its own project conversation. Both run at once; switching tabs or opening another file never interrupts either one.
Agent sessions are read-only. Reading needs no answer; a shell command that could change something stops at an approval you have to grant, and the agent's file edits come back for review after the turn, a change at a time. Raw model reasoning is never forwarded to the browser.
Continuity and canon questions come back with citations, and suggested edits arrive as proposals you accept or reject before anything is written.
Everything else works without an agent installed. For the Claude tab, install
Proseview with its claude extra (pipx install "proseview[claude]", or
pipx inject proseview claude-agent-sdk for an existing install).
How the AI features work →
The Analysis panel lists nine prose passes, each with the number of matches in this scene. Switching a row on marks the page you are reading: repetition, filter verbs, sensory language, passive voice.
Edit turns the page you were reading into the page you type into — same
typography, same highlights. Mod-S saves to the file, and the stats update.
Story-bible pages, plans, and other Markdown notes open in the file view with
their own Edit button (or press E). Frontmatter is kept as it is. Tables
show as tables and are saved as written; a note with HTML inside its lines
opens as plain Markdown, so it is saved exactly as typed. Like
scenes, each save keeps a backup and won't overwrite a change made elsewhere.
A save rewrites only the paragraphs you changed, so Obsidian [[wikilinks]],
callouts and embeds elsewhere in the file stay exactly as written.
Codex and Claude each get a tab and a separate project conversation. Opening another file does not replace either conversation or silently send that file to the agent. Attach the current file when you want it included.
Mod-K from anywhere. File paths, scene metadata, TODOs, notes, and prose,
grouped by kind.
Chapter proportion and words per scene, your storylines as lanes, and reading order against the order events actually happen — so a scene read far from where it happens is visible instead of inferred. Hover any scene for its card.
Click Export to turn the whole book, a chapter, a scene, or any mix of them into an e-book for Apple Books, Kobo and Kindle, a paperback interior ready for KDP or IngramSpark, or a PDF to share, as a finished-looking book or in manuscript format for agents. Pick chapters and scenes by hand, by status, point of view or character; choose a style (Classic, Modern, Romance or Manuscript); and see the pages, laid out exactly as the file will be, before you export. A check afterwards says whether the book is ready for the stores or what to fix.
Clips use the bundled demo manuscript: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (public domain), split into 39 scenes across 12 chapters with story fields filled in. See fixtures/demo-book.
Requirements: Python 3.11+ on macOS, Linux, or Windows.
pipx install "proseview[claude]"
proseview --root /path/to/your/novel[claude] adds the SDK the Claude tab needs; plain pipx install proseview
is everything else. A browser tab opens at http://localhost:7842. Press Ctrl-C to stop.
Point it at any folder of Markdown. If there is no manuscript/ directory the
whole folder is the manuscript, so an Obsidian vault or a flat pile of chapter
files works with no configuration.
my-novel/
├── manuscript/
│ ├── ch01/
│ │ ├── 01-opening.md
│ │ └── 02-meeting.md
│ └── ch02/
│ └── 01-aftermath.md
└── .proseview.yaml # optional
Frontmatter is optional. Proseview reads what is there and falls back on what is not. Layout and the full frontmatter contract →
proseview snapshot --root /path/to/your/novel --out ~/my-novel-sitewrites the dashboard as static files any web host can serve, GitHub Pages
included. Readers can browse scenes, search, and read the analysis; nothing on
it edits, and no server runs. Paths from your machine are replaced by the
folder's name. --demo also lets visitors try edit mode (what they save stays
in their browser tab) and Export, with ready-made EPUB and PDF files of the
whole book in every style to download. --title, --site-url and --preview-image decide how a
link to it unfurls when shared. The live demo is built that way.
Proseview runs without a config file. A .proseview.yaml at the repo root can
change where things live, set a word-count goal, pick which agent tab opens
first, or point the Timeline at your own frontmatter keys. proseview init
writes a starter file.
manuscript_path: manuscript/
target_words: 80000
discuss:
agent: codex- Manuscript layout and frontmatter
- Configuration reference
- Working with AI
- The analytics
- Exporting: EPUB and PDF
Proseview is alpha. Everything described above works today. Still unfinished:
- 🚧 Skills on the Claude tab. Codex discovers them today; Claude's picker is still empty.
- 🚧 Frontmatter editor (status, where, todos) inside the scene viewer so you don't need to drop into your text editor for routine fields.
See plans/roadmap.md for the full punch list.
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytestThat runs over a thousand unit tests plus an HTTP end-to-end tier that boots a real
proseview subprocess and drives every endpoint — saves and the conflict
guard, TODOs and notes, the AI proposal bridge through the actual CLI, and
live reload over SSE — asserting on bytes written to disk.
Discuss integration tests use a deterministic fake app-server and isolated
home/state directories; they never contact Codex, the network, or your profile.
~15 seconds, no extra dependencies.
One behaviour suite runs against both agents, so a feature cannot silently
work on one tab and not the other.
A browser tier drives the real UI in Chromium (editor round-trip fidelity, the selection menu, highlight passes, deep links, Discuss streaming/approvals/dock behavior, and applying an AI proposal end to end). It's opt-in:
pip install -e ".[e2e]"
python -m playwright install chromium
pytest -m e2e_browserBoth tiers work on a throwaway copy of fixtures/demo-repo. See
CONTRIBUTING.md for details.
MIT. See LICENSE.