Changelog

Version history and release notes for Alistair.

v1.2.1
September 2026 Release

Verified Writing

  • Tamper-evident authorship history: every project automatically keeps a per-project hash chain that records word-count growth, save timestamps, and paste-character counts on every autosave and manual save, so you can show a publisher or agent real evidence a manuscript was actually written over time rather than generated wholesale. Always on, nothing to turn on; a project that existed before this feature picks up tracking from that day's word count on its next save, not a false claim of continuity back to page one.
  • Pacing & Analytics panel: its own section on Project Home shows the ledger by default, no click required, with a word-growth sparkline, entry count, tracking date range, and a one-glance verify status.
  • Milestones & Replay: flag any manual save as a milestone the same way you already lock a version, and jump into a real before/after diff of any manual checkpoint for the document you have open.
  • Signed Authorship Report export: builds a signed JSON report (full ledger, per-document word-growth curves, paste statistics, a plain-English summary) that anyone can check independently, with no Alistair install required, via a small standalone verifier script.
  • Verify Report, built into Alistair: a new "Verify Report" action (sidebar and welcome screen, no project needs to be open) lets anyone already running Alistair check a report's signature and chain integrity in a couple of clicks instead of using the standalone script.
  • This is a tamper-evident record, not tamper-proof: it proves the recorded history is internally consistent, not that it's the only history that could ever have existed. It never looks at what you typed and never tracks which tools you used to write it, only that the words grew, over time, the way real writing does.

Version Control

  • Autosave now creates real recovery snapshots: previously, only a manual save ever created a full-content version snapshot, so hours of autosaved-but-never-manually-saved writing had no recovery point if something went wrong. Autosave now occasionally snapshots too, gated by word-count delta or elapsed time so it stays cheap.
  • Fixed a document-version-snapshot endpoint that was missing for root-level documents (outside any folder), which had been silently failing.

macOS

  • Corrected lingering "coming soon" language for macOS on the Getting Started page, which had fallen out of sync with the actual Mac release.
v1.2.0
August 2026 Release

v1.1.9 was skipped — Screenplay was a big enough addition to warrant a minor version bump instead.

Screenplay

  • Real shared toolbar: the Screenplay editor now uses the exact same toolbar every other document type does — title, status, tags, Save, Export, and real Version History — instead of a separate lookalike. Row B swaps in an element-type button group (Scene / Action / Character / Parenthetical / Dialogue / Transition) in place of the prose-only formatting controls.
  • Element-type keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl/Cmd+1 through 6 set the current line's type without reaching for the toolbar.
  • Corrected page margins: the live editor was rendering Scene Heading, Action, and Transition text flush against the physical page edge instead of the real 1.5"/1" industry margins. Fixed to match the compiled PDF exactly.
  • Character cue indent corrected: moved from 3.7" to 3.5", verified against both a real produced shooting script and published formatting guides.
  • Stackable character extensions: (V.O.), (O.S.), and (O.C.) can now be combined with (CONT'D) on the same cue — e.g. "MARY (O.S.) (CONT'D)" — instead of only one or the other.
  • Real page numbers: the compiled PDF now paginates into true discrete pages (instead of one continuously-flowing document) and stamps "N." flush-right on every page from page 2 onward, matching standard screenplay convention.
  • (CONTINUED) / (MORE) markers: when a scene or a character's dialogue is split across a page break, the compiled PDF now marks it on both sides the way a real script does.
  • Production-style scene numbers: when scene numbering is enabled, numbers now flank the slug line in the left and right margins instead of sitting inline with the heading text.
  • Character/Location autocomplete now reads your actual sheets: typing a scene heading or character cue now suggests names from the Character and Location documents you've already created, not just names already typed elsewhere in the script.
  • Character & Location List: the Screenplay Compiler has a new panel that auto-derives a cast and location list straight from your scenes, with an option to include it as an appendix page.
  • No more dead-end "Drafting" folder: Screenplay projects no longer get a Drafting folder whose Storyboard/Story Arc tools depended on Manuscript-only scene data and never had anything to show.
  • Fixed clipped/misaligned fields: the Scene Heading and Character line's INT/EXT, Time-of-Day, and Extension pickers were native dropdowns that clipped their own selected text ("CONTINUOUS" showing as "CONTINUOU") and left dead gaps for short values. Replaced with the same click-to-open picker style already used for Location/Character Name, and the text fields themselves now size to their real rendered width instead of a fixed default.
  • Scene number locking: a new "Lock scene numbers" option in the Screenplay Compiler makes numbers permanent across recompiles — a scene added later gets a letter-prefixed number (A6, B6…) instead of shifting every page after it, matching how a distributed shooting script is actually renumbered.
  • Revision header: an optional "TITLE - REVISION LABEL" line in the top margin of every compiled page, alongside the page number.
  • Live compiled preview: the Screenplay Compiler now shows an always-current preview of the actual compiled pages as you change settings, instead of only finding out what you'll get after exporting.
  • Compiler layout matches the rest of Alistair: Sequences and Format are now toolbar tabs that open as an overlay over the preview — the same pattern the Manuscript Compiler already uses — instead of a fixed settings sidebar.
  • Fixed the "blank project" banner sticking around: the project home screen's word/scene counts (and the "this project is a blank page" banner) only ever recognized Manuscript scenes, so a Screenplay project with real content still looked empty. Screenplay documents are now counted correctly.
  • Onboarding tour updated: removed two steps that pointed at controls hidden in Screenplay mode, corrected the export step's wording, and added a new step introducing the element-type buttons and their keyboard shortcuts.
  • Font quick-select: pick Courier Prime, Courier Final Draft, or Courier New for the compiled script right from the Format tab, with an automatic fallback to a system Courier if the chosen one isn't installed.
  • Fixed title page centering: the title and author block was centered within its own fixed-height box, but that box sat flush at the top of the page instead of the middle — so it read as noticeably off-center. Now centers within the full page.
  • Fountain and Final Draft (.fdx) export from the Compiler: export your entire compiled script (every included Sequence, in compiler order) as a plain-text Fountain file or a Final Draft-compatible .fdx file, alongside the existing PDF export.

Manuscript Compiler

  • EPUB export: compile your manuscript straight to a real, reflowable EPUB e-book, alongside the existing PDF and DOCX export. Title, author, and cover image are pulled automatically from your Manuscript Cover page, no separate upload step.
  • Live EPUB preview: a new EPUB Preview tab shows the actual reflowed e-book output next to Print Preview, deliberately not page-simulated, so what you see is genuinely how an e-reader will lay it out.
  • Auto-numbered chapters ("Chapter 1", "Chapter 2"…) now apply consistently across Print, DOCX, and EPUB, leaving prologues, epilogues, and interludes untouched.

Text to Speech

  • New toolbar button: Text to Speech now has its own button in the main app toolbar, so you can read text aloud without opening a document first.

Rhythm (formerly Prosody)

  • Restored and renamed: the panel had been silently disabled for every project since Chapbook was folded into Manuscript. It's back, and renamed from "Prosody" to "Rhythm" — the old name is a poetry-only term and no longer described what the panel actually covers.
  • New Prose Rhythm mode (Manuscript): a sentence-length heatmap, average sentence length, a variation score, repeated-sentence-opener detection, estimated silent read-aloud time, and a dialogue-vs-narration ratio — the prose analogue of poetic meter, not meter itself.
  • New Screenplay Pacing mode: per-scene length bars, dialogue density, and character screen-time, derived directly from the elements already in your script.
  • The original meter, rhyme scheme, and syllable-count tool is preserved as a secondary "Poem" tab within Manuscript projects.
  • Redesigned to match the rest of Alistair's right-panel style (Characters, Locations, Story Elements) — a proper panel header, collapsible sections, and the same filter-pill tabs, instead of a bespoke card layout.
v1.1.8
August 2026 Release

macOS

  • Automatic updates now work on Mac: Alistair can download and install its own updates on macOS instead of only pointing you to a manual download page. The first install still needs a one-time Gatekeeper approval (right-click, Open), since that step needs a paid Apple developer certificate we have chosen not to buy. After that first approval, updates apply on their own.

Settings

  • Update banner no longer covers the toolbar: the "a new version is ready" banner used to sit on top of the toolbar buttons underneath it instead of pushing them down. It now properly makes room for itself.
  • Honest update button labels: buttons that used to say "Restart Now" or "Restart & Install" now say "Download Update," matching what they actually do. A short note now explains why Mac updates are currently handled this way.
  • More settings buttons feel consistent: the license Activate and Deactivate buttons, the Settings close button, and the "Take the Tour" link now use the same gentle hover lift and shadow as the rest of Alistair.
  • Guided tour now covers License, Updates, and Data: the Settings walkthrough used to stop after Workflows. It now continues through the three tabs it used to skip.

Templates & Editors

  • Consistent button styling across every template: the Compiler, Picture Book Compiler, Scrapbook, Review tools, World Map Generator, Character Relationships Map, and every front and back matter template (including the Picture Book set) now share the same square corners, soft shadow, and hover lift used throughout Alistair.
  • Front and back matter forms now match their preview height: the form on the left used to sometimes end up a different height than the preview page on the right. It now always matches, and scrolls inside itself if your fields run long.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed auto-save silently failing on every field of the Author Bio template, caused by a call to a method that did not exist.
  • Fixed the Author Bio template's preview rendering at a mismatched height compared to every other back matter template.
v1.1.7
August 2026 Release

World Map

  • Story mode journey trails reworked: journeys now draw as straight lines instead of curves. Right-click anywhere on a line to add a bend point, drag it to reshape the route, right-click a bend point to remove it — the same direct-manipulation editing you'd expect from a real drawing tool. Two characters sharing the exact same route now automatically offset into parallel lines so neither can end up hidden behind the other, with no manual fix required.
  • Location connections are now 100% derived from your story: every line between locations is a real Parent Location relationship read straight from that location's own document — never a hand-drawn, purely cosmetic connection. "Draw Connections" mode has been removed; set or change a location's parent from its own document, the way every other piece of story data in Alistair already works. The curved/straight line toggle is gone too — location connections are always straight (or bent via the same waypoint editing journey trails use).
  • New "Up to" scrubber for Location mode: drag the scrubber to any point in your manuscript and locations not yet mentioned in a scene dim out (rather than vanish, so their position on the map stays visible for context), with connections to or from them hidden entirely. See your world exactly as introduced so far, not the whole thing at once.
  • Locations panel replaces the old show/hide dropdown: individual locations now toggle on and off from a proper panel list (matching Story mode's Characters legend) instead of a dropdown menu, using each location's own color.
  • Bigger, better-centered leg-number badges and character journey markers — both were easy to misread at their old size. Badges now also swerve out of the way if a waypoint bend point would otherwise sit directly on top of one.
  • Fixed a stray "extra path" artifact that could appear at a sharp bend in a journey line.

Welcome Screen

  • Book-cover project cards: the project list is now a grid of book covers instead of a plain row list. No cover uploaded yet? Alistair generates a clean one from your project's title and author. Right-click any project to upload your own cover image, pick a color, or set the author byline from the new Edit Cover dialog.
  • Sort control: sort your project grid by Recent, Name, or Type, remembered across launches. The "Continue writing" ribbon always tracks whatever you actually opened last, independent of how the grid below is sorted.

Pacing & Analytics

  • Tension Arc chart: replaces the old dialogue-vs-tension scatter with a line chart of tension across your manuscript in scene order — the classic story pacing curve. See at a glance whether tension actually climbs toward your climax, or whether three high-tension scenes land back to back with no breather in between.
  • Removed a redundant "Re-analyse" button from inside the analytics panel — the refresh button in the panel's header already does the same thing.

Scrapbook

  • Masonry grid layout: scrapped lines now lay out in a multi-column waterfall grid instead of a single narrow column, so it reads more like a collected board of clippings and makes better use of a wide window.
  • Group by scene: a new Recent / By Scene toggle lets you cluster your scraps by whichever scene they were cut from, instead of always a flat chronological list.

Bug Fixes

  • The left panel's folder flyout is now anchored to a fixed, predictable position with proper internal scrolling for long folders, instead of occasionally drifting off-screen or clipping content with no way to reach it.
  • Grammar checking no longer flags a character's own vocabulary as "considered offensive" — an author gets to write the words the story calls for.
v1.1.6
August 2026 Release

macOS Release

  • Alistair is now available natively on Mac (Apple Silicon). Download it from the Download page.
  • Apple Metal GPU acceleration: local LLM chat automatically detects and uses your Mac's GPU via Metal — no drivers or extra downloads, matching the CUDA acceleration already available on Windows.
  • Fixed the inspector panel's tool icons being unreachable on shorter windows — the panel now scrolls instead of clipping them off-screen.
  • Fixed the "Create New Document" dialog appearing off-center when the window wasn't in full screen.

LLM/ML Chat

  • Smoother streaming: chat responses now render at a smoothed, typewriter pace instead of the raw jitter of individual tokens arriving over the network.
  • Read Aloud for chat: every assistant message now has a speaker button that reads it aloud with your default TTS voice, playing quietly in the background without opening the TTS panel (that stays reserved for reading scenes). Fixed it being missing from hover actions on chat sessions restored after relaunch.

Aliases & Story Elements

  • Alias chips: character and location sheets now manage alternate names (nicknames, last names, titles) as removable chips instead of a raw comma-separated field. Any alias is recognized in your scenes as the same entity instead of creating a duplicate.
  • Rename-safe: renaming a character or location sheet now offers to alias the old name and migrates every existing scene's Story Elements data (cast, moods, locations, relationships) to the new name — so a rename no longer splits a character into two disconnected identities across World Map and Storyboard.
  • Alias Manager: a new toolbar button and modal (mirrors the Dictionary manager) for reviewing and editing aliases project-wide, with right-click "Link to Character/Location…" from any selected text in a scene. Edits made here now stay in sync with an already-open character/location sheet instead of risking a stale autosave reverting them.
  • Local cast detection: known characters mentioned in the open scene are now suggested as one-click "add to scene" Story Elements entries instantly, no LLM call required — the LLM scan is still there for genuinely new entities plus mood/time detection.
  • Relationship cross-linking: picking a character for a scene's relationship entry now prefills the relationship type from that character's own sheet-level relationships when the other character is already in the scene, instead of redeclaring "siblings" every time.

World Building

  • Population, Climate, and Governing Faction/Owner fields added to location sheets, now surfaced directly in World Map node tooltips.
  • Editable journey colors: character journey trail, marker, and location-pill colors on the World Map's Story mode are now editable by clicking them, with the color picker no longer opening off-screen.
  • Fixed the Locations / Story / Map mode toggle silently failing partway through a switch.

Storyboard & Compiler

  • Storyboard cards now show real data: scene cards display your actual Story Elements (character/location chips, live word count, status) instead of a disconnected shadow copy of POV/Setting/Conflict fields that never saved correctly. The unused Beat field is gone, and cards are restyled to match the rest of the app.
  • New "Continuation" scene type for the compiler: continues the previous chapter with a small scene-break mark instead of a new chapter heading.
  • Fixed scene type never actually being saved after initial document creation — it's now a real, persisted field editable from the toolbar at any time.
  • Fixed Prologue/Epilogue/Interlude special headings failing to render in the compiled manuscript due to a case-sensitivity bug.

Left Rail & Binder

  • A dedicated "Add New" folder button is now pinned to the bottom of the left rail, replacing a flyout row that could silently create folders at the project root.
  • Right-click a rail folder to rename or delete it (built-in folders stay protected); the context menu now matches the app's square, accent-hover styling and no longer renders off-screen near a window edge.
  • The document flyout's right-click menu gained Change Status, Change Scene Type, and Change Tags (with inline tag creation) alongside Delete — status shows as a subtle row tint, scene type as its real icon, tags as color dots. Fixed these submenus closing the whole flyout instead of opening.

Bug Fixes

  • Character, location, and world-building sheets could get stuck showing "Auto-saving…" forever after an edit — the save confirmation was being sent to a stale reference instead of the sheet that actually requested it. Location/world-building saves were also being processed twice by two separate save handlers at once; now only one runs.
  • The character sheet showed "Auto-saving…" from the moment it loaded, before any edit or save had happened.
  • The alias chip input on character/location sheets could sit slightly out of alignment with the field above it when no aliases existed yet.
  • Widened cramped input fields on character/location sheets (Height/Build/Hair/Eyes and similar rows) so they reflow properly instead of being squeezed into fixed narrow columns, especially inside the Characters/World Building quick-reference side panel.
v1.1.5
July 2026 Release

New Features

  • Scrapbook: cut a passage you're not sure about right from the scene editor, select it, right-click, and choose "Scrap Selection," and it's saved to a running Scrapbook instead of being lost for good. The text leaves the scene immediately (undo still works as normal), and each entry keeps its source scene, word count, and a timestamp so you always know where it came from and can jump back to that scene in one click. The Scrapbook is created automatically the first time you scrap something and stays up to date even if you're scrapping from several scenes across open tabs.

Picture Book Improvements

  • Zoomable, pannable spread canvas: the spread editor's canvas now works like Storyboard's: zoom in and out with the toolbar buttons or Ctrl/Cmd + scroll, and click-drag anywhere on the empty canvas to pan around. Handy for zooming in close to check fine detail or pulling back to see the whole spread at a glance. Zooming only changes what you see on screen; the actual font sizes and image dimensions in your spread never change.
  • Print-to-PDF now splits every spread correctly: exporting a picture book to PDF now produces two physical pages per spread, split right down the centre gutter, matching how a real printed book actually binds instead of squeezing both facing pages onto one sheet.
  • Trim sizes now match real printer paper: the page-size options in the spread editor are now standard home/office paper sizes (US Letter by default, A4, and A5) instead of publishing-industry trim sizes. Because the exported PDF's physical page size is read directly from your book's own trim, printing at home needs no scaling or letterboxing: what you design is exactly what comes out of the printer.
  • Split-image mode fixed: placing two separate images side-by-side across a spread (one per page) no longer shows a blank/white background where the empty-image placeholder pattern should be.
  • Illustration Brief simplified: removed the Setting, Focal Point, and Page-Turn Hook fields to keep the brief focused on what illustrators actually need: characters & action, composition, and colour palette.

UI Polish

  • Toolbar & panel icons are more visible: icons in the left/right activity strips and the top editor toolbar (Chat, Templates, Settings) were rendering in a faded, low-contrast colour at rest. They now use the app's normal text colour, with the accent colour reserved for hover and active states.
  • Google Fonts manager moved out of the toolbar: your added Google Fonts no longer sit as a permanent row of chips in the shared formatting toolbar. They're selectable from the Font dropdown as before, and a new "Manage Google Fonts…" option opens a small popover for removing ones you no longer need.
  • Fixed the "Add Google Font" dialog: the option to add a new Google Font by name or URL previously opened a browser prompt that didn't render in some setups, so nothing appeared to happen. It now opens a proper in-app dialog, matching the rest of Alistair's rename/create dialogs.

Voice & TTS

  • Voice cloning quality upgrade: the underlying voice-cloning model has been upgraded to a newer, cleaner-sounding version with an improved vocoder, producing noticeably crisper cloned audio.
  • Fixed voice blending sounding like two overlapping voices: blending two voices, including a cloned voice blended with one of the built-in voices, now produces a single coherent voice instead of an "overlaid," duet-like effect.
  • Fixed clipped first word in generated speech: TTS playback occasionally cut off or rushed through the first word of a line; audio trimming now preserves quiet-but-real speech at the start and end of a clip instead of mistaking it for silence.
  • Faster, more stable TTS generation: fixed an issue where certain voices could silently fall back to a much slower, memory-heavy audio processing path, which in rare cases could make the app become unresponsive while generating speech.

Performance

  • Quieter startup: Alistair no longer checks the local text-to-speech server's status on every launch. That check now only happens the first time you open the TTS panel, removing unnecessary connection attempts (and console noise) for anyone who hasn't set up voice cloning.
  • Faster project search and TTS voice loading: searching across every document in a project, and loading your saved TTS voices, now fetch in parallel instead of one at a time.
  • More resilient project saves: a broad pass over the project-saving backend now protects every metadata write (scenes, folders, documents, project settings) with file locking and atomic writes, preventing rare data corruption if two saves happen at the same moment.

Bug Fixes

  • Character Relationships Map: toolbar buttons (zoom, center view, etc.) no longer show a stray dotted outline after being clicked, and the zoom in/out buttons have a larger, easier-to-hit click area.
  • Fixed an error in the Google Font manager that could silently prevent a newly added font from being saved or appearing in your font list.
  • Clicking away from the folder flyout menu in the left panel now reliably closes it.
  • Fixed "Continue where you left off" on the welcome screen sometimes abandoning you at the project home screen instead of reopening the document you were last working on.
v1.1.4
July 2026 Release

Feature Improvements

  • Continuity Checker — quote excerpts: every issue card now shows the exact sentence from your manuscript where the value was found, not just a scene reference. Green "verified" cards confirm attributes that are consistent across the whole draft; red cards show the conflicting values side by side with the surrounding prose so you can fix the right passage without hunting for it.
  • Continuity Checker — verified section: consistent attributes (one unique value across all scenes) now appear as a separate green "verified" list below the issues, letting you confirm at a glance that key character and location details are holding steady as your draft grows.
  • Template Manager visual refresh: the custom template library is now displayed as a colour-coded card grid. Each template card shows its category (general, character, world, front matter, visual) with a matching accent colour on the card border, badge, and hover shadow. Cards animate in with a staggered entry and hover with a shadow-only lift that matches the rest of the Alistair interface.
  • Kill Your Darlings colour update: the KYD panel accent colour has been updated from orange to the app's accent blue throughout: issue type badges, the context block highlight, and the Accept button now match the rest of the interface.

UI Cleanup

  • Story Elements: removed duplicate continuity button: the "Check for continuity issues" quick-action button has been removed from the Story Elements right panel since the Continuity Checker is already its own dedicated panel. The panel is cleaner and the canonical entry point is unchanged.

Editor Improvements

  • Shared toolbar font size & line height persist across scenes: font size and line height set in the shared toolbar now stick when switching between documents. Opening a new scene no longer resets the toolbar back to the document's saved value; the shared setting is always applied on load.
  • Auto-save on by default: new installs now have auto-save enabled out of the box. The setting only applies on first launch; existing users with it turned off are unaffected.

Bug Fixes

  • Shared toolbar font size was displaying as 12 pt on first open due to an invalid stored default; it now always shows the correct point size.
  • Formatting applied via the shared toolbar now correctly targets all paragraph elements, including those the editor creates as block-level divs when pressing Enter in a fresh scene.
v1.1.3
June 2026 Release

World Building

  • Story Journey: Switching the world map to Story mode now hides parent-child hierarchy arrows and manual connection lines entirely. Only character journey trails are shown, letting you focus on where characters travel, start, and end up without structural geography cluttering the canvas.
  • World Map Creation: Draw and shape your world's geography directly inside Alistair. Paint continents freehand, generate terrain with rivers, coastlines, slopes, and region labels, place cities and towns, and export your finished map as a clean SVG, all without leaving your project.

Bug Fixes

  • Connection legend items in the bottom status bar now lay out in a single horizontal row instead of stacking vertically and growing the bar height.
v1.1.2
May 2026 Release

Editor Improvements

  • Dialogue & Thought style buttons: the style ribbon now has distinct Dialogue (external, spoken) and Thought (internal) buttons. The ribbon auto-detects which applies: when the caret is in a paragraph whose first non-whitespace character is a double quote the Dialogue button lights up as a hint; a single quote lights up Thought, making it easy to apply the right style without hunting for it.
  • Strikethrough & Clear Formatting: two new buttons in the shared formatting toolbar: one for strikethrough text, one to strip all inline formatting from the selection in a single click.
  • Smart Quotes & Autocorrect toggles: per-session toggle buttons in the formatting toolbar let you enable or disable autocorrect and smart quotes on the fly without opening Settings.

UI & Navigation

  • Toolbar wrapping: both the formatting toolbar and the document header toolbar (title, word count, Save/Versions/Export) now wrap gracefully at narrow window widths instead of overflowing and cutting off buttons.

Bug Fixes

  • Strikethrough and Clear Formatting toolbar buttons now correctly fire their commands when clicked.
  • Smart quotes no longer throw a runtime error when triggered with no active text selection.
  • Pressing ESC while a modal (export, shortcuts, comments, style editor) is open no longer also exits composition mode.
  • Comments visibility now correctly restores its saved state when a document is loaded.
v1.1.1
May 2026 Release

New Features

  • Kill Your Darlings: offline prose scanner that surfaces candidates for cutting: redundant phrases, adverb clusters, passive constructions, filler words, overlong sentences, and clichés. Issues are colour-coded by type and displayed with a ±55-character context snippet; click any result to jump directly to that passage in the editor. Findings can be accepted as inline comments for deferred review or dismissed in one click. Runs entirely on device with no model download required.
  • Dialogue-Only View: extracts all spoken dialogue from the current scene, detects speakers using attribution tags and surrounding context, and colour-codes each character's lines with a persistent per-project palette. A beats toggle shows or hides the action and description lines between exchanges. Click any dialogue card to navigate to that exact passage in the editor. Useful for reading voice consistency, spotting over-long exchanges, and auditing how much page time each character holds.
  • Onboarding Tutorial: a guided walkthrough for new users that introduces the core workflow: creating a project, opening the editor, and navigating the binder. Steps are contextual and non-intrusive: each prompt appears only when the relevant area of the app is visible. The tutorial can be replayed at any time from Settings and is dismissed permanently once completed.
  • Home Screen Project Metrics: the project home screen is now a full writing dashboard. Stat cards show total words, scene count, today's word count with a doughnut progress ring, and current day streak with a flame indicator. A GitHub-style activity heatmap covers the full calendar year (Jan–Dec) with emerald intensity scaling to your daily goal. The Pacing & Analytics section features KPI cards (total words, avg tension, read time), a dialogue-versus-tension quadrant chart with per-scene colour-coded bubbles, a per-scene word-count bar chart, and a full scene breakdown table. Recent Documents and Restore Workflow sit in a quick-access row directly above analytics.
  • TTS Per-Character Voice Assignment: assign a saved voice blend to any named character. When reading aloud, the TTS engine automatically switches to that character's voice each time their dialogue is spoken, with no manual switching required. Voice assignments are configured in the Dialogue-Only panel and persist with the project.
  • Storyboard Scene Cards: the Storyboard's Board tab now shows collapsible scene cards with story elements at a glance: tension level, POV, dialogue ratio, and key beats, making it the canonical home for scene-level story planning. The separate Cards inspector panel has been removed in favour of this unified view.

Feature Improvements

  • Inspector panel renamed to TODO: the "Suggestions" inspector panel is now labelled "TODO" throughout the app: clearer name, same capture workflow.

Bug Fixes

  • Workflow save and restore now correctly resolve API paths; saved sessions appear on the home screen and restore in one click.
  • Lucide icons in stat cards and the scene editor toolbar are now rendered at their declared pixel size, eliminating blurry or over-scaled icons.
v1.1.0
April 2026 Release

New Features

  • Continuity Checker: rule-based offline scanner that detects character attribute contradictions (eye colour, hair, age), location direction conflicts, and name spelling variants via Levenshtein distance. Appears as a tile in the scene home grid; results display in the right panel. No LLM required: it runs entirely on your machine with no model download.
  • Writing Goals & Session Tracker: set a daily word goal and track it with a doughnut progress indicator, 7-day history chart, and streak counter. A slim 4 px collapsible progress bar lives in the shared toolbar and can be toggled via the inline word-count button. All history persists locally.
  • "Appears In" Character Index: each character card now has a collapsible "Appears In" section listing every manuscript scene that mentions the character's name, with scene title, word count, and a text excerpt around the mention. Results cache locally; a Re-Scan button forces a fresh pass when needed.
  • Collaboration Annotations: share your work with readers or editors and receive inline annotations without touching the manuscript. Export selected documents as a .alistair-review bundle in two clicks. The reviewer opens the bundle in their own copy of Alistair, reads in a read-only overlay, selects text, and adds typed annotations (comment, suggestion, or question). The author imports the returned bundle through a merge dialog that shows each annotation's anchor status (matched / fuzzy / unresolvable), lets them accept or reject, and writes accepted annotations as document comments with a review badge. Re-anchoring handles text edits since export via four-level fuzzy matching. No server, no account: it's entirely file-based.
  • Pacing & Analytics Dashboard: per-scene manuscript analytics accessible from the left sidebar. Includes a tension curve (heuristic: punctuation density + short-sentence ratio), words-per-scene bar chart, average dialogue ratio doughnut, POV distribution horizontal bar, and a full scene breakdown table (words, dialogue %, tension %). Re-analyse with one click.
  • Character Interview: interview any of your characters directly: the character speaks in first person, grounded entirely in what you have written on their sheet. Two modes: Early Interview (fewer than five fields filled) and In Character (five or more confirmed). For undefined fields, the character responds instinctively (deflecting, going vague, or pushing back) but never invents facts. A Save to Character Sheet button sends the conversation through a local extraction pass, shows a review modal comparing current vs. new values field by field, and writes only the fields you approve.

Feature Improvements

  • Real-time token streaming: LLM chat responses now stream token-by-token via SSE; the first token appears in ~1–2 seconds instead of waiting 15–45 seconds for the full response to buffer
  • Character card persistence: "Appears In" results persist in localStorage with a timestamp; re-scanning is only triggered when you explicitly request it
  • Interview intent routing in chat: typing "interview [character name]" in the LLM chat now routes directly to the character interview feature, and the model never fabricates a fictional session with your actual characters

Bug Fixes

  • Lucide SVG icons inside panel tiles and sidebar items now correctly pass click events through to their parent, so clicking on an icon always registers the intended tile action
  • Various stability improvements

UI & Navigation Improvements

  • Panel keyboard shortcuts: press ` (backtick) anywhere in the app to toggle the left project panel; press Shift+` to toggle the right inspector panel. Both shortcuts are inert while you are typing in the editor or any input field.
  • Improved panel handles: both the left and right divider bars now highlight in the accent colour on hover and reveal a directional chevron pill showing which way the panel will collapse. Tooltip text includes the keyboard shortcut hint. When a panel is collapsed the chevron remains faintly visible as a discovery cue.
  • Clean welcome screen: the right inspector panel is now always hidden at startup. The workflow restore prompt has been moved from the right panel into a non-intrusive floating card in the bottom-right corner of the welcome screen. It slides in automatically if saved workflows exist and can be dismissed with a single click.
  • Left panel always opens on launch: the project browser now resets to open on every launch regardless of how it was left, ensuring your projects are always visible when you start writing.
  • Export for Review: scenes only: the Share for Review export dialog now shows only scene/chapter documents, filtering out front matter, back matter, and other non-prose document types. The redesigned picker adds real-time search, status filter chips (All / Draft / Revision / Final), live selection stats (word count, avg per scene, estimated reading time), and a resizable divider between the scene list and settings panels.
v1.0.0
2026 Initial Release

Writing & Editing

  • Paginated rich text editor with full formatting toolbar (bold, italic, headings, alignment, lists)
  • Composition mode for distraction-free drafting with typewriter scrolling
  • Multi-scene split-panel workspace with shared style ribbon applied across all open scenes
  • Inline images with drag-to-resize handles and four layout modes (inline, wrap-left, wrap-right, full-width)
  • Inline comments with toggle visibility; all project comments load on project open without needing to open a scene
  • Tag-based suggestions system with filtering by Characters, Storyboard, Story Arc, World Building, and Notes
  • Style ribbon with reusable formatting presets that persist across every scene in a project
  • Live paragraph metrics (word count, character count, paragraph count) displayed in the style ribbon as you type
  • Find & Replace: non-destructive in-editor search using CSS Custom Highlights (zero DOM mutation, undo history always intact); replace current or replace all
  • Drafts and version history with side-by-side diff comparison and one-click restore
  • Auto-save with configurable interval and last-saved timestamp indicator
  • Import existing .docx and .pdf projects into Alistair

Story Organization

  • Drag-and-drop project binder with nested folders and documents
  • Scene management with live drag-to-reorder and real-time editor updates
  • Front matter and back matter templates (title page, copyright, dedication, acknowledgments, glossary)
  • One-click manuscript compiler with PDF and DOCX export and industry-standard formatting defaults
  • Character profiles with photo upload, structured templates, relationship mapping, and sidebar reference cards
  • Interactive character name autocomplete popup while writing scenes, with per-project toggle
  • World-building templates for geography, cultures, history, factions, religions, and magic systems
  • Location sheets with photo upload, parent-location hierarchy dropdown, and interactive relationship map
  • Live name sync: renaming a character or location updates every Story Elements chip and dropdown across the project instantly
  • Storyboard with draggable scene cards and story arc tracking
  • Story Elements per-scene metadata (location, time of day, POV character, mood, narrative beats, characters in scene)
  • LLM scene scan for extracting missing Story Elements as a reviewable checklist; nothing is inserted without approval
  • Story Arc integration: selectively pull any scene metadata and beats into your arc view
  • Notes and research management with full version control and rich text editing
  • Ideas tile for saving quick text snippets for characters, locations, and plot points
  • Custom template builder with visual drag-and-drop designer for fully bespoke document types
  • Chapbook project type for poetry with six poetic forms, real-time helper sidebar, and prosody tile (syllable counts, meter detection, rhyme scheme tracking)
  • Picture Book project type with spread-by-spread editor (text + illustration panels), double-page preview, illustration staging notes, and picture book compiler

Workspace & Interface

  • Multi-tab support with detachable pop-out windows for side-by-side reference and editing
  • Floating panel pop-outs: any left-panel tile can be detached as a native OS window with an always-on-top pin
  • Workflow Save & Restore: save named workspaces capturing the open project, active document, pop-out windows, and panel layout; restore in one click with an optional startup prompt
  • Writing metrics panel with live word count, read time, sentence count, dialogue %, pacing, and paragraph type
  • Light, dark, and fully customizable themes with dynamic window theming and color picker
  • Fully remappable keybindings with conflict detection scoped per action group

LLM/ML Tools

  • Offline LLM chat interface powered by llama.cpp; all inference runs locally, manuscripts never leave the machine
  • Manuscript-aware RAG context: indexes actual prose so responses reference real characters, locations, and story content
  • Chapter-targeted queries: ask about a specific chapter by name and it retrieves that exact document's content directly
  • Source links in chat: responses include clickable scene reference cards with real text excerpts; click to open that scene in the editor
  • No-project chat handling: if no project is open, Alistair lists available projects as clickable options before answering
  • Analysis by Alistair: inline suggestions surfaced directly in your document with Accept, Dismiss, and Discuss actions
  • Bring Your Own Model: import any .gguf quantized model via drag-and-drop or the settings panel
  • CUDA GPU acceleration with partial offload support and dynamic performance scaling per model size
  • Optimized GPU batch processing for fast prompt ingestion on long manuscript context windows
  • Text-to-Speech (100% offline): 26 built-in voices, voice blending at custom ratios, full playback controls (play/pause/seek/speed), read-aloud from selection, WAV export, all powered by a bundled Kokoro ONNX engine with no internet or API key required