Ahti Docs v1.1.1 Support

Documentation

This is the full guide to Ahti, a calm home for writing a long book on Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Every feature is here, grouped by what you are trying to do. Jump to a section below, or read straight through.

Getting Started #

Ahti is a calm home for a whole long book. Instead of scattering your chapters across a pile of files, it gathers your manuscript, your research, your character and place notes, and your outline into one quiet workspace built for the long haul. What matters most is where your words actually live: your writing is kept as plain Markdown text files that you own outright. There is no locked-up database and no proprietary bundle. You can open those same files in Finder, in any other Markdown editor, or back them up however you like, and they will still be there in ten years.

One app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone

Ahti is a Universal Purchase. Buy it once and it runs on your Mac, your iPad, and your iPhone at no extra cost. The three share the same ideas and the same file format, with each shaped to its device: the Mac works with folders on your disk, while iPhone and iPad keep your work in iCloud Drive or on the device itself. If you write on more than one device, storing a vault in iCloud Drive lets the same book follow you from desk to couch to train.

Your writing lives in a vault

Everything in Ahti lives inside a vault. On the Mac a vault is simply a normal folder on your disk, full of Markdown files, one per document, that you can browse in Finder or edit in any Markdown app. On iPhone and iPad a vault is a named folder kept inside Ahti in either iCloud Drive or On My iPhone, and you can see it in the Files app under Ahti. You can keep as many vaults as you like, one per book or project, and each one is completely self contained.

The welcome screen on Mac

When you open Ahti without a vault, the welcome screen greets you with three ways to begin:

  • Open Vault lets you choose an existing folder. If you point it at a folder that is already an Ahti vault, it opens it. If you point it at a plain, empty folder, Ahti quietly sets it up as a new vault for you.
  • New Vault starts you from a template in a folder you choose. After you pick New Vault, Ahti asks you to Choose a template: Blank (an empty Manuscript and Research, nothing else), Novel (chapters and scenes with character and place research), Short Story (a single story document with a notes folder), or Non-Fiction (parts and sections with a sources folder). Then you choose where the vault folder should live.
  • Try the Demo creates a vault already filled with the sample novel The Salt Light, so you can poke around a real project without touching your own writing.

You can reach these commands without the welcome screen too. In the menu bar, File ▸ New Vault… is ⌘⇧N and File ▸ Open Vault… is ⌘⇧O.

The welcome screen on iPhone and iPad

Phones and tablets have no folder picker, so the welcome screen asks a couple of gentle questions instead. First, under Where to store it, choose iCloud Drive (which syncs across your devices) or On My iPhone (which keeps the vault on this one device). If you are not signed in to iCloud, Ahti tells you so and starts you on local storage. Next, give the vault a name under Vault name, for example My Novel. Each vault becomes its own folder, so the name is how you will tell your projects apart.

Then pick what to start from. New Vault lets you choose one of the same templates as on the Mac, and Try the Demo fills a vault with the sample novel The Salt Light. Your new vault opens as soon as it is ready.

Opening a vault you have used before

Ahti remembers your recent vaults so you rarely start from scratch. On the welcome screen, look under Recent Vaults and tap or click one to reopen it. On iPhone and iPad you will also see iCloud Vaults and Local Vaults lists that show every vault Ahti can find on the device, so you can always browse your way back to a project. To tidy the recent list on mobile, swipe a vault row to the left and tap Remove. This only forgets the shortcut, it never deletes the vault or your writing.

On the Mac, the menu bar keeps a running list under File ▸ Open Recent, and Clear Menu at the bottom empties that list when you want a fresh start. In everyday use you may not need any of this: when you launch Ahti it quietly reopens the vault you had open last, so you land right back in your book.

Bringing in a project from a file

If someone shares an Ahti project with you, or you have exported one to a single file, you can bring it in with Import Project…. Open the project menu from the toolbar (the button near the top left) and choose Import Project…, then pick the .json file that Ahti's Export Project creates. This loads that project into your current window. It is a good companion to Export Project, which writes your whole project out to one file you can hand off or archive.

Switching or making another vault later

You are never stuck in one project. Once a vault is open, use the project menu in the toolbar: on the Mac you will find Open Vault… and New Vault… there, and on iPhone and iPad a single Open or New Vault… command brings the welcome screen back so you can switch storage or start something new. Whatever you were working on is saved on its way out, so moving between books is safe and quick.

The Binder #

The binder is the tree down the left side of the window. It holds every folder and document in your project and is where you organize, rearrange, and move around your work. Every new project starts with three top-level sections: Manuscript (your draft, the text that compiles into a finished book), Research (notes, sketches, reference material that stays out of the compile), and Trash. You can add as many folders and documents inside these as you like, nested as deep as you want.

To show or hide the binder on a Mac, click the left panel button at the far left of the toolbar or press ⌘\. On iPhone and iPad the binder is a full-screen overlay: tap the files button (the folder-tree icon) at the top left to slide it in, and it slides away again when you open a document.

Selecting and opening

Click a document to open it in the editor. Click a folder to select it and open it; if it was collapsed it also expands. Click a folder that is already selected to collapse or expand it again. The little chevron at the left of a folder row expands and collapses it without changing what you have selected, and the number on a folder row is its child count.

  • Add to the selection: ⌘-click (Windows/Linux Ctrl-click) individual rows.
  • Select a range: ⇧-click the first and last rows.
  • Keyboard: click into the tree, then use the arrow keys. ↑ and ↓ move up and down (opening each document as you go), → expands a folder or steps into it, and ← collapses it or steps back out to its parent.
  • Open beside the current document: on a Mac, ⌘-double-click a row to open it in a split pane to the right.
  • Find where you are: press ⌥⌘R to reveal the document you are editing in the binder and scroll it into view.

Creating a new text or folder

Along the bottom of the binder is a small add bar. Its buttons are New Text, New Folder, and Add Template…, with a trash button at the far right that moves the selected item to the Trash. New items appear inside whatever you have selected (or as a sibling if a document is selected), falling back to the Manuscript when nothing is selected. You can also right-click any folder or section and choose New Text or New Folder to create inside it, and ⌘N makes a new document from anywhere.

New documents are auto-named as numbers (1, 2, 3…) within their folder, and new folders start out as New Folder, so every new item drops you straight into an inline rename box. Type the name you want and press Return (or press Esc to keep the default name). When you name a new document this way, the cursor then jumps into the document body so you can start writing right away. If a filter is running when you create something, the filter clears first so the new row is visible.

Renaming

To rename an item, select its row and press Return (or F2), or right-click it and choose Rename. Edit the name and press Return to keep it or Esc to cancel. The three special sections, Manuscript, Research, and Trash, cannot be renamed.

Reordering

On a Mac, drag any row to move it. A bright insertion line shows exactly where it will land, and dropping onto a folder nests the item inside it. On iPhone and iPad, press and hold a row for a moment to pick it up, then drag to reorder; a quick swipe still scrolls the list as normal, and the list auto-scrolls when you drag near the top or bottom edge. The special sections stay put, but you can freely rearrange everything inside them.

Copy, paste, and duplicate

Ahti keeps its own binder clipboard, separate from the system clipboard, so copying a document here never disturbs text you have copied elsewhere.

  • Copy (⌘C, or right-click and choose Copy) copies the selected item, and everything inside it, to the binder clipboard.
  • Paste (⌘V) drops that copy into the selected folder, after the selected document, or into the Manuscript when nothing is selected. You can also right-click a folder and choose Paste, or right-click empty space below the rows to paste into the Manuscript. You paste into folders and sections, not into a document, so a document row offers Copy but not Paste.
  • Duplicate (right-click and choose Duplicate) makes a copy right next to the original.

Selecting several items first turns these into batch actions: Copy 3, Duplicate 3, and so on.

Moving items

To move something without dragging, right-click it and choose Move to… (or Move 3 Items… with several selected). A picker opens listing every folder and section you can move into. Start typing to filter the list and press Return to pick the top match, or click a destination. This is the tidy way to relocate an item that lives far from where it needs to go.

Group, ungroup, and merge

Select two or more items, right-click, and choose Group into Folder (shown as Group N Items for a multi-selection) to wrap them in a brand-new folder in place. To do the reverse, right-click a folder and choose Ungroup: its contents move up to sit where the folder was, and the empty folder is removed.

To combine documents, select two or more of them, right-click, and choose Merge N Documents. They fold into the first one in binder order, one after another, and their comments and footnotes come along too. The documents that were merged in are then removed.

Splitting a document

When one document has grown into two, you can split it. Put the cursor in the editor where the break should be and press ⌘⇧K (Split document at cursor). Everything from the cursor onward becomes a new document placed right after the current one in the binder, so a long scene becomes two neat pieces.

Importing

Right-click a folder or section to bring outside writing in. All three importers place their results inside the folder you clicked.

  • Import Files… lets you choose one or more files (Markdown, plain text, or Word .docx). Each file becomes its own document. If a file cannot be read, the rest of the batch still comes in and Ahti tells you how many were skipped.
  • Import and Split… takes a single file and asks which heading level to break it at (1, 2, or 3). Ahti splits the file into a separate document at every heading of that level, which is a fast way to turn one long manuscript into per-chapter documents. If it finds no headings at that level, the file comes in as a single document.
  • Import OPML… takes an outline file (.opml) and rebuilds it as nested folders and documents, so an outline drafted in another app arrives with its structure intact.

The filter bar

Above the tree is a filter bar for narrowing a large binder down to what you need. Type in the Filter by title… box to show only items whose title matches, along with their parent folders for context. If your project has characters, a people button appears next to the box: tap it to open a list and pick one or more characters, and the binder shows only items linked to any of them. Combine the two and an item has to match both the title text and a chosen character. A small number badge shows how many characters you have picked, and the ✕ button clears the whole filter. While a filter is active the tree flattens out so matches under collapsed folders still surface, and drag-to-reorder pauses until you clear it. The same filter bar works over Collections too.

Trash and restoring

Deleting in Ahti is gentle: items go to the Trash section first and nothing leaves your disk until you empty it. Send something to the Trash with the trash button at the bottom of the binder, by right-clicking and choosing Move to Trash, or, with several selected, Move N to Trash.

To restore something, open the Trash, then drag the item back out into the Manuscript or Research (on a Mac), or right-click it and use Move to… to send it to a folder. To delete for good, right-click the Trash section itself and choose Empty Trash (available only when the Trash has something in it). Deleting an item that is already inside the Trash removes it permanently rather than moving it again.

More row actions

Right-clicking a row (on iPhone and iPad, tapping the ⋯ button at the right of the row) offers a few more touches: Change Icon… to pick a custom icon for a folder or document, Convert to Folder or Convert to Document to switch a row's kind (an empty folder can become a document, and a document can become a folder), Export as Markdown… to save a document, or a whole folder's subtree, as a single Markdown file, and Save as Template. On a Mac you can also choose Reveal in Finder to jump to the item's file or folder on disk, since a Mac vault is just a folder of Markdown files you own.

Writing & Formatting #

The heart of Ahti is a rich-text editor. You type the way you would in any word processor, with real bold, italics, headings, and lists on the page, but every document is saved as a clean Markdown file in your vault. Nothing is locked inside a proprietary format. On Mac your words live in a plain folder of .md files you own outright; on iPhone and iPad they sit in iCloud Drive or On My iPhone. Formatting that Markdown cannot express (text color, highlights, comments, page breaks) is tucked into small HTML or data- attributes so the file still opens and reads cleanly in any other Markdown app.

Each document opens with its title at the top of a centered writing column. Press Return in the title to commit it and drop straight into the body. As you write, Markdown-style typing works too: start a line with # for a heading, - for a bullet, > for a quote, or wrap a word in ** for bold, and Ahti turns it into real formatting.

The formatting bar

Above the writing column (on iPhone and iPad it sits at the bottom of the screen, just above the keyboard) is the formatting bar. On the far left, on Mac, are two menus that set the editor's font and size for the whole document. The everyday tools follow:

  • Bold (⌘B), Italic (⌘I), Underline (⌘U), and Strikethrough.
  • Highlight color and Text color. Each opens a small palette of swatches with a Remove option at the end. Select some text first, then pick a color.
  • Headings: Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3, plus a Paragraph button (the pilcrow) to turn a heading back into ordinary body text.
  • Bullet List and Ordered List.
  • Alignment: Align Left, Center, Right, and Justify.

The bar also carries the Focus button (a target ring, more on that below), a comment button (⌘⇧M on a selection), and a footnote button. On a phone or a narrow window the bar shows the common tools and a … button on the right that expands the rest (fonts, subscript and superscript, inline code, blockquote, indent, code block, horizontal rule, page break, links, and clear formatting) right there in the bar.

More formatting: the Format tab

The heavier tools live in the inspector's Format tab rather than crowding the bar. Open the inspector with ⌘⇧I (or its button in the top toolbar) and choose the Format tab, marked with a type icon. Everything there acts on whatever you have selected in the active editor, exactly like the bar does. It is grouped into:

  • Styles: your saved named styles (see below).
  • Text: Subscript, Superscript, inline code, and a Transformations menu that rewrites the selection: UPPERCASE, lowercase, Title Case, Sentence case, curly or straight quotes, and tidy-ups like collapsing double spaces or stripping stray invisible characters.
  • Paragraph: line spacing, paragraph spacing and indents, blockquote, and decrease or increase indent (⌘[ and ⌘]).
  • Blocks: code block, table, horizontal rule (a scene divider), and page break (a hard break for compiled and printed output).
  • Links & media: add a web link (⌘K), link to another document in your project, or insert an image by URL.
  • Tools: Find by Formatting (jump between comments, footnotes, highlights, colored text, and links), Linguistic Focus (tint one part of speech across the text), and Clear Formatting.

On iPhone and iPad the Format tab stays put in the inspector. It is the home for the tools too big for the phone's bar, so the bar's … button handles the quick ones and the Format tab handles styles, tables, and paragraph shaping.

Named styles

A named style is a formatting preset you can reuse. There are two kinds. A paragraph style remembers line spacing, indents, spacing before and after, and alignment. A character style remembers inline marks like bold, italic, underline, color, and highlight.

To make one, format some text the way you like it, put your cursor in it, open the Styles control (in the Format tab, or on the bar's expanded tools), and choose New paragraph style or New character style. Give it a name. From then on it appears in the Styles list, marked with for paragraph or a for character. Click a style to apply it to the current selection, or the small ✕ beside it to delete it. Styles are saved with the project, so they follow the vault.

Tables

Open the Table control in the Format tab and choose Insert table to drop in a three-by-three table with a header row. With the cursor inside a table, the same menu lets you add a row above or below, add a column left or right, toggle the header row, or delete a row, column, or the whole table. Drag a column border to resize it. Tables round-trip as standard Markdown tables in your files.

Line spacing and paragraph shape

The Line spacing control (in the Format tab's Paragraph group) offers Single, 1.15, 1.5 lines, Double, 2.5, and Triple. With nothing selected it sets the spacing for the whole document; select some paragraphs first to scope it to just those.

Next to it, Paragraph spacing & indents opens number fields (measured in em) for first-line indent, left and right indent, and space before and after a paragraph. Like line spacing, it applies to the whole document unless you select text first. A Reset paragraph formatting button clears it all back to normal. For quick nudges, ⌘] and ⌘[ indent and outdent a paragraph symmetrically on both sides, like a block quote.

Find and Replace

Press ⌘F to open the find bar in the top corner of the active editor. Type your term and the counter shows your place, like 3/12. Press Return for the next match and ⇧Return for the previous one, or use the up and down chevrons. The Aa button toggles match-case. ⌘G and ⇧⌘G also step to the next and previous match without the bar in focus. Press Esc to close.

To replace, click the chevron on the left of the find bar to reveal the Replace row. Type your replacement, then use Replace for the current match or Replace all for every one. When the editor is split, find and replace act on whichever pane you are working in.

Two editors side by side

On a wide screen (Mac, or iPad in landscape) you can put two documents side by side. Grab a document's breadcrumb tab at the top of the editor, or a title from the binder, and drag it to the left, right, top, or bottom edge of the editing area. A highlighted half shows where it will land; drop it there to split. You can also just click a [[wiki-link]] or an autolinked title and Ahti opens that document in a split to the right, keeping your current one in place.

Each pane has its own tab and its own find bar, and edits in one show up live in the other if they share a document. Drag the divider between them to resize. Press ⌘W to close the pane you are in; the other one fills the space. Splitting is a wide-screen feature. On a phone or a narrow window, opening a linked document simply replaces the current one instead.

Composition mode

Composition mode is Ahti's distraction-free, full-screen writing view: a sheet of paper floating over a dimmable backdrop, with everything else out of sight. Enter it with ⌘⇧C, the zen-garden button in the top toolbar, or the project menu's Composition mode. Press Esc to leave.

A control strip hides at the bottom edge. On Mac, move the pointer near the bottom to reveal it; on iPhone and iPad it stays visible. From it you can set text scale, the paper's width and position, and the backdrop brightness (slide it dark for night writing, or use the paper, text, and backdrop color pickers). The strip also shows your live word count and daily target, and gives you Keywords, Go to document to jump to another scene without leaving, an Inspector with your synopsis and word target, and Exit. On a phone the strip is trimmed down to the target meter, Focus, and Exit.

Focus mode

Focus mode dims everything except the sentence or paragraph you are working on, so your eye stays with the words in front of you. It is separate from composition mode and works in the normal editor too. Click the Focus button (the target ring) on the formatting bar, or the Focus button in composition mode's control strip. Each click cycles through three states: off, then dim to the current sentence, then dim to the current paragraph, then off again. It is a comfort setting that carries across every editor until you turn it back off.

Views: Corkboard, Outliner, Continuous #

Ahti gives you four ways to look at the same documents, and you switch between them freely without ever losing your place. Write a scene in the Editor, step back and shuffle index cards on the Corkboard, read a whole folder as one flowing manuscript in Continuous, or lay everything out as a table in the Outliner. Whatever you have selected in the binder is what these views show, so moving between them is just a change of scenery, not a change of subject.

The view switcher

On Mac and iPad the switcher lives at the top center of the window, next to your project title. It is a little cluster of buttons: Editor (a page icon) and Corkboard (a grid icon) sit together in a bordered box, and just to their right are Outliner (a rows icon) and Continuous (a stacked-pages icon). Click one and the center pane changes to that view. The active view is highlighted so you can always tell where you are.

On iPhone the top bar is a single tidy row, so the four views live in the More menu (the ⋯ button beside the title). Tap it and you will find Editor, Corkboard, Outliner, and Continuous with a checkmark on the current one.

Keyboard shortcuts (Mac): press ⌘O to jump to the Outliner from anywhere. Press ⇧Tab to flip back and forth between the Editor and the Corkboard without reaching for the mouse.

Editor and Continuous

The Editor is the plain single-document writing surface. Select one document in the binder and you write in it, one scene at a time.

Continuous stitches many documents into one long, editable manuscript, each scene flowing into the next. This is the classic way to read or edit a whole chapter as if it were a single file. Ahti switches to a continuous stream on its own whenever you select a folder (a folder has no text of its own, so it shows you its scenes) or whenever you select more than one document. You can also force it any time with the Continuous button, which gathers the folder around whatever you were reading and shows it as one text.

In a continuous stream, each scene carries its own title as a small centered divider above it. You can rename a scene right there, and the new name updates everywhere else at once. (If you prefer an uninterrupted read, titles can be turned off in Settings.) A small floating control in the top-right corner tracks which scene your cursor is in, shows your position as 3/12, and lets you step to the previous or next scene with the up and down chevrons. The + button on that control adds a fresh document right after the scene you are in, and a matching + at the very bottom of the stream appends one to the end. A bar across the top names the folder you are reading and counts the documents in it. When you have hand-picked several documents rather than a folder, it says something like 3 docs selected instead.

Corkboard

The Corkboard shows the documents inside a folder as index cards, one card per scene, the way you might pin note cards to a wall to plan a story. Each card shows the document's title across the top and its synopsis in the body. Type straight into the synopsis area to jot what the scene is about (it saves as you go), and double-click the title strip to rename the card. Along the bottom of each card you will see colored dots for its keywords, its characters, and its status label on the right. A card's label tints the whole card so you can spot groupings at a glance.

To rearrange scenes, drag a card to a new spot. On the grid this reorders the documents in the binder, so the new order sticks. A single click on a card selects it; a double-click opens it in the Editor. On iPhone and iPad, press and hold a moment before dragging, and a single tap opens the card for writing.

Add a new card with the New Card button or the dashed + card at the end of the board, and it drops straight into naming so you can title it right away.

The gear button in the top-right corner (the sliders icon) opens the board's options: sliders for Card width, Card height, and Spacing, plus checkboxes for Number cards (adds a running number to each), Arrange by label (groups cards under label headings without changing their real order), Show images (shows a scene's first image as a banner on its card), and, on Mac and iPad, Freeform layout (let cards float wherever you drag them, and their positions are remembered).

Outliner

The Outliner is a spreadsheet-like table of your documents, one row per item, with folders you can expand and collapse using the little arrows in the Title column. It is the place to see a lot of information at once and edit it in bulk. The Title column is always shown first; every other column you can turn on or off.

Click the columns button (the three-columns icon in the Title header) to choose what to show. The available columns are Synopsis, Label, Status, Section (the section type used when compiling), Keywords, Characters, Words (this document's word count, or a folder's total), Total (the running total of a row and everything under it), Target, Progress, Created, Modified, and Include (whether the item is included when you compile). Any custom metadata fields you have created appear here as their own columns too. Out of the box, Synopsis, Label, Status, Words, Target, and Include are shown. There is a Reset to defaults option at the bottom of the column menu.

You can choose column order and width: drag a column header sideways to move it, and drag the thin handle on a column's right edge to make it wider or narrower. Click any column header to sort by it (click again to reverse, a third time to clear the sort). The sort only reorders the view, so your real binder order is never disturbed.

Most cells are editable in place. Double-click a title or synopsis to edit it; pick a label, status, or section from its dropdown; check Include to mark a document for compiling; and type a number into Target to set a word goal, which draws a little progress bar as you write toward it. Drag a row (or a whole multi-selection) onto a folder to nest it, or onto another document to drop it in alongside as a sibling.

When you select more than one row, a bulk-edit bar appears at the top with Set Label and Set Status dropdowns and Include / Exclude buttons, so you can change many documents at once. The header also has buttons to expand all and collapse all folders, and to export the outline as a CSV file you can open in a spreadsheet.

On iPhone the table would be too wide, so the Outliner shows a compact view with just the Title and Words columns. Your full column choices are kept and reappear on Mac and iPad.

How selection stays in sync

All of these views draw from the same selection, so nothing gets out of step. Click a card on the Corkboard or a row in the Outliner and that document becomes the selected item everywhere: the binder highlights it, the inspector on the right switches to it, and if you jump to the Editor it is already open. In the Outliner you can build a multi-selection with ⌘-click to add individual rows or ⇧-click to select a range, and that same set carries into a Continuous read of exactly those documents. On iPhone and iPad, because there is no side-by-side editor, tapping a card or row also slides you into the Editor so you can start writing right away.

The Inspector #

The inspector is the panel on the right side of the window. It follows whatever you have selected in the binder or open in the editor, and it holds everything about a document that is not the document's text: its synopsis and notes, its formatting tools, its characters, bookmarks, keywords, snapshots, comments and footnotes, and a label and status footer that stays visible at all times.

To show or hide the inspector, click the right-panel button at the far right of the toolbar, or press ⌘⇧I. On Mac you can also use View ▸ Toggle Inspector in the menu bar. If nothing is selected, the inspector simply reads No selection with a reminder to select an item to inspect.

The tabs

Across the top of the inspector is a row of small icon tabs. From left to right they are Synopsis & Notes, Format, Characters, Bookmarks, Metadata & Keywords, Snapshots, and Comments & Footnotes. The tabs show only their icons to save room, but hovering (or the accessibility label) gives you the full name. The active tab is underlined in your accent color. Click any tab to switch to it.

Synopsis & Notes

This is the first tab and the one you will likely use most. At the top is the Synopsis card, the same index card you see on the corkboard. It has a title field on top (typing here renames the document live, and a blank title reverts, since titles can never be empty) and a synopsis box below it for a one-line summary of the scene. If you would rather not write the synopsis yourself, click the small quotation-mark button at the bottom of the card to fill it from the document's opening text.

Below the card is the Notes editor, a full rich-text space for anything you want to jot about this document that should not appear in the manuscript. Notes support [[wiki-links]] and pasted web links, and clicking a link follows it. Each document keeps its own notes and its own undo history, so ⌘Z in one document's notes will never reach into another's.

Format

The Format tab gathers the advanced text tools that do not fit on the compact format bar: Styles (save and apply named formatting presets), sub- and superscript, inline code and change case under Text, line spacing, alignment, blockquote and indent controls under Paragraph, code blocks, tables, horizontal rules and page breaks under Blocks, and links, document links and images under Links & media. It acts on whichever editor pane is active, the same one the format bar drives. Open a document first, or you will see a note asking you to. This tab stays available on iPhone and iPad, where it is the home for these tools that the phone's format bar defers here.

Characters

For a scene document, the Characters tab lists the characters in that scene. Use the + Add character… menu to attach an existing character sheet, click a character to expand its stats with a quick dice roller, use the arrow button to open that character's full sheet, or the × to remove it from the scene. For a folder, the tab is read-only and rolls up every character who appears in the folder's documents. You create characters themselves through the Add Template picker (a D&D, Kids on Bikes, custom sheet, or a plain Character Sketch), not from this tab.

Bookmarks

Bookmarks here belong to the selected item. Each one is either internal (a jump to another document in your project) or external (a web URL). To add one, use the Add Bookmark form at the bottom: give it a title, choose Internal or External, pick the target document or type the address, then click Add Bookmark. Click a saved bookmark to open the document or the link.

Metadata & Keywords

This tab collects everything factual about the document. The General box shows its type and its created and modified dates, an Include in Compile toggle, a Section Type (leave it on Auto to resolve from structure, or pick one for Compile's section layouts), and a per-document word Target that draws a small progress bar as you write.

Below that, Assigned Keywords lets you tag the document. Remove a keyword with its ×, add an existing one from the dashed chips, or create a brand-new keyword with a name and color. Documents also have a Nicknames section: other names that will autolink to this document (for example "the library" pointing at a place's page). Then come your own Custom Metadata fields (use Manage fields… to define them), and a Statistics grid showing words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, and estimated reading time.

Snapshots

A snapshot is a saved copy of the document's text at a moment in time, so you can rewrite freely and still get the old version back. Click Take Snapshot to capture the current text. Each snapshot in the list shows its title, when it was taken, its word count, and how that compares to the document right now. Double-click a snapshot's title to rename it (on iPhone and iPad, a single tap renames). Use Restore to roll back (Ahti snapshots the current text first, as a safety net), Compare to see a word-by-word diff against the current document with additions and deletions highlighted, or Delete to remove it.

Comments & Footnotes

This tab shows a document's comments and footnotes together in one list, ordered by where they anchor in the text. To create one, select some text in the editor, then press ⌘⇧M for a comment or use the footnote button in the format bar. Comment cards carry a colored dot (click it to change the highlight color) and their text; footnote cards are numbered in document order. Clicking any card scrolls the editor to that spot and highlights it. On each card you can convert a comment to a footnote (or the reverse), delete it, or edit its text right in the card.

The label and status footer

Along the very bottom of the inspector, always visible no matter which tab you are on, sit two dropdowns: Label on the left (tinted with the label's own color) and Status on the right. These are the classic Scrivener metadata, and you can clear either one back to No Label or No Status. If you have several items selected in the binder, the footer shows a count like 3× and applies your choice to all of them at once; when the selected items disagree, the dropdown reads — Multiple — until you set a shared value.

Document Notes, the aggregated view

Separate from any single document's notes, Ahti keeps a generated Document Notes page that gathers the inspector notes from every document and folder into one read-only stream, with each heading linking back to its source. Open it and the main editor shows the collected notes; clicking a heading jumps to that document (on a wide screen it opens beside the notes in a split). You do not edit here. Selecting the Document Notes page shows a short explainer in the inspector instead of the usual tabs, pointing you back to each item's own Synopsis & Notes tab, which is where the text actually lives.

Project Notes & Bookmarks

For notes and bookmarks that belong to the whole project rather than one document, open Project Notes & Bookmarks from the project menu in the toolbar. It is a dialog with two tabs. Notes is a free-floating rich-text pad for ideas, to-dos, and anything not tied to a document. Bookmarks lists project-level jumps: pick a document from the Bookmark a document… menu to save a jump to it, or use Add URL to save a reference link. Click a bookmark to open the document or the URL, or the trash icon to remove it.

On iPhone and iPad

On the phone and tablet the inspector is not a side panel but a full-screen drawer that slides up over the editor. Tap the right-panel button in the toolbar to open it, and use the × in the top corner to close it. All the same tabs are there, including Format. When you tap a link inside the notes, the drawer closes itself so you can see where it took you.

Characters, Templates & Tools #

Ahti gives you a few tools built for people who write fiction: reusable document templates, character and setting sketches, full tabletop character sheets you can roll dice on, and an offline name generator. This section walks through each one.

The Add Template picker

A template is a reusable document you keep in your Templates folder and stamp out copies from later. To open the picker, use any of these:

  • Click the template button (the layout icon, labeled Add Template…) at the bottom of the binder.
  • Click the Templates folder itself in the binder.
  • Click the Add Template row that appears under the Templates folder.

The Add Template dialog offers three plain templates and three tabletop sheets:

  • Blank — an empty document to build up yourself.
  • Character Sketch — a page of background fields (Name, Role in story, Occupation, Physical description, Personality, Habits / mannerisms, Background, Internal conflicts, External conflicts, Notes), each a bold label with a blank line beneath it.
  • Setting Sketch — the same idea for a place (Setting name, Role in story, General description, Relation to character or plot, Unique features, Sights, Sounds, Smells, Notes).

Under TTRPG character sheets you get:

  • D&D Character — ability scores (STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS, CHA) rated with modifiers, plus the background fields.
  • Kids on Bikes — stats (Brains, Brawn, Fight, Flight, Charm, Grit) rated with dice from d4 to d20, plus background.
  • Custom TTRPG — you define your own attributes.

Pick any of the first five and Ahti drops the template straight into your Templates folder, ready to edit. If you pick Custom TTRPG, a second step opens (Custom Character Sheet) where you name each attribute and choose whether it is a Modifier (rolled as a d20 plus the number) or a Die. Use Add attribute to add rows and the trash icon to remove one, then Create. You fill in the actual values later on the sheet.

Character sheets and stats

Open a tabletop character document and you will see a Stats panel at the top, with a small badge naming its system (D&D, Kids on Bikes, or Custom). Each stat is a named box with a dropdown. Modifier stats run from -5 to +10. Die stats offer d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20. The stat names and their kinds are fixed when the sheet is created, so here you only choose values. Below the stats sits the ordinary document body, where the background-info fields live so notes and numbers stay together on one page.

Making a character and choosing its color

The templates you add are colorless blueprints. To make a real, usable character, create a copy from one: right-click a folder or document in the binder (long-press on iPhone and iPad) and choose New from “…” for the template you want. Each copy becomes its own character and is automatically given the next unused color from the palette, so two characters made from the same sheet never look alike.

To change that color, open the character and click the color swatch beside its title (labeled Character color). That color is the dot you will see next to the character everywhere else. Templates have no swatch, since a blueprint carries no color of its own.

The Characters inspector tab

The inspector's third tab (the people icon, Characters) is where you connect characters to your scenes. You can also jump straight to it by clicking the people control in a scene's title bar or on a corkboard card. An empty scene shows a dashed + there; clicking it selects the scene and opens this tab.

For a scene document:

  • Use the + Add character… dropdown to link any character (any Character Sketch or tabletop sheet that lives outside the Templates folder and Trash).
  • Each linked character shows a round color dot with its initials, its name, an Open sheet button (the arrow-out-of-box icon) that jumps to its document, and an X to remove it from this scene.
  • If the character has a tabletop sheet, click its name to expand its stats with a quick dice roller.

For a folder, the tab is a read-only roll-up: it lists every character appearing in the folder's documents, with no add or remove. It is a fast way to see who is in a chapter or part.

Rolling dice on a stat

Expand a linked character with a sheet and you will see a dice icon next to each stat. Click it to roll:

  • A modifier stat rolls a d20 and adds the modifier, shown as a breakdown like d20(14) +2 = 16.
  • A die stat rolls that die, shown as d8 → 5.

By default the dice tumble as 3D physics dice across the whole screen, with a popup showing the total. Click anywhere to dismiss them, or they fade on their own. The result stays pinned beside the stat until you clear it with the eraser icon, and each scene remembers its own rolls.

You can tune this in Project Settings. Turn 3D dice rolls off for a plain instant roll with no animation. Under Dice color, choose Character's color (the dice match whoever is rolling), Primary color, or Custom… to pick a fixed color. If the 3D roller ever cannot start, Ahti quietly falls back to instant rolls so a roll never hangs.

The Name Generator

Stuck on what to call someone? Open the project menu in the top bar and choose Name Generator. It offers twelve names at a time in two styles, realistic and fantasy; switch styles with the buttons at the top. Click any name to copy it to the clipboard (a checkmark confirms). Use Regenerate for a fresh batch and Done to close. The names come from a built-in word bank, so it is instant and works completely offline.

Metadata, Keywords & Targets #

Beyond its text, every document in Ahti can carry a little structured information: a label and a status, keywords, custom fields of your own, and a word target. This is the classic index-card metadata that lets you plan and track a long book. Alongside it, Ahti keeps your writing goals, a manuscript target, a daily target, and a deadline, and shows you how your pace is doing. Here is where all of that lives.

Labels and statuses

A label is a colored tag (like Idea, Revise, or a point-of-view character), and a status marks where a document stands (like To Do, First Draft, or Done). Every item can have one of each. The quickest way to set them is the pair of dropdowns along the bottom of the inspector, always visible: Label on the left (tinted with its color) and Status on the right. With several items selected in the binder, the footer shows a count and sets your choice on all of them at once. A label's color also tints its corkboard card and shows through the outliner and binder.

To create and organize your labels and statuses, open the project menu and choose Manage Metadata. The dialog has four tabs: Labels, Statuses, Keywords, and Custom Fields. On the Labels and Statuses tabs you can add new entries, rename them, recolor a label with its swatch, reorder them with the up and down arrows, and mark one as the default (the star) that every new document starts with. The trash icon removes one.

Keywords

Keywords are reusable, color-coded tags you can pin to any document, and a document can carry as many as you like. Manage the master list on the Keywords tab of Manage Metadata, where you add, rename, recolor, and delete them. To tag a document, open the inspector's Metadata & Keywords tab and, under Assigned Keywords, click a dashed chip to add an existing keyword or type a new name and color to make one on the spot. Keywords show as small colored dots on corkboard cards and get their own column in the Outliner. They are a light, flexible way to track threads, themes, or anything else that cuts across your folders.

Custom fields

When labels, statuses, and keywords are not enough, you can invent your own fields. On the Custom Fields tab of Manage Metadata, add a field and choose its type: Text, Checkbox, List (you supply the options, one per line), or Date. A field like POV, Location, or Timeline then appears in the inspector's Metadata & Keywords tab under Custom Metadata for every document, and as its own optional column in the Outliner. To edit the fields themselves later, use Manage fields… in that inspector section or return to the Manage Metadata dialog.

Per-document word targets

Any document can carry its own word Target. Set it in the inspector's Metadata & Keywords tab, or type a number straight into the Target column of the Outliner, and Ahti draws a small progress bar that fills as you write toward it. It is a gentle way to keep a scene from ballooning, or to hold yourself to a minimum.

Project targets and deadline

For goals that span the whole book, open Writing Targets from the project menu, or click the target icon in the top toolbar. Set a Manuscript target (the total word count you are aiming for) and a Daily target (how much you hope to write each day). Add a Deadline and Ahti works out how many words a day it will take to finish in time, and offers a one-tap button to set your daily target to that pace. The dialog shows live progress bars for both the whole manuscript and today's writing. Turn on Count Draft folder only to measure against your Manuscript alone, leaving research and notes out of the tally.

Today's number counts the words you have actually added today, so deleting and rewriting does not inflate it, and it rolls over at midnight.

Writing history and streaks

To see the shape of your writing over time, open Writing History from the project menu. It shows today against your daily goal, tiles for your current streak, longest streak, days written, and total words logged, and a year-long activity heatmap where each square is a day, darker for more words. If you have set a manuscript target and deadline, it tells you whether your daily pace has you on track and projects a finish date. Export CSV saves the day-by-day history as a spreadsheet.

Statistics and word frequency

Two more insight tools sit in the project menu. Project Statistics tallies your manuscript: words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, estimated reading time, document and folder counts, average words per document, and a breakdown of how many items sit under each status and label. Word Frequency lists your most-used words, across the whole project or the Manuscript alone, with a filter box and a running count of unique words and estimated pages. Both offer an Export CSV for the full data. They are handy for spotting a crutch word you lean on, or seeing how a draft is balanced.

Compiling & Exporting #

When it is time to turn your binder full of scenes into a single finished manuscript, you compile. Compiling gathers your documents in order, formats them to your taste, and writes out one file: an ebook, a Word document, a web page, plain Markdown, or a print-ready page. Your original documents are never changed. Compile only reads them.

Opening the Compile window

On the Mac, choose File ▸ Compile… from the menu bar (⌘⇧E). On the web and on iPhone and iPad, open the project menu in the toolbar and choose Compile…. The window has your settings on the left and a live preview on the right, with a running word count above it.

Choosing what goes in

The left side has two tabs, Format and Contents. Under Format ▸ Structure, the Compile menu picks your source: a folder (usually your Manuscript) or one of your collections. You can also name a Front matter and Back matter folder to compile before and after the main text, for a title page, a dedication, or acknowledgements.

Switch to the Contents tab to see every document that will be gathered, each with a checkbox and a Section Type. Uncheck one to leave it out, or set its section type to control how it is laid out. These are the same per-item flags you see in the inspector, so a document marked not to be included stays out here too, unless you turn off the include filter described below.

Format and layout

Under Output, pick your Format:

  • ePub (ebook) and Word (DOCX), the files publishers and ebook stores expect.
  • Rich Text (RTF), Web page (HTML), Markdown, and Plain text for everything else.
  • Print / PDF, which opens the formatted manuscript ready to print or save as a PDF.

For the rich formats you can set a Font (Serif, Sans, or Mono) and a Size. A Separator menu chooses what goes between documents: nothing, a blank line, a horizontal rule, a centered #, or a page break.

Under Titles & numbering, toggle whether folder (chapter) titles and document (scene) titles appear, and whether chapters are numbered, with a prefix like Chapter, a numbering style (1, 2, 3; I, II, III; or One, Two, Three), a starting number, and an optional page break before each chapter. For finer control, turn on Section layouts to format each section type (part, chapter, scene, and so on) independently.

Include, filter, and polish

The Include & filter group decides what makes the cut and what extras come along: add a Title page, compile only items marked for compile, or narrow to a single status or label. You can fold in each document's synopsis or notes, and add a table of contents. For ebook formats, an Ebook metadata group collects the language, ISBN, publisher, date, rights, and description that go inside the file.

Replacements let you swap text in the output only, without touching your documents, and support tags like <$projecttitle>, <$author>, <$wordcount>, and <$compiledate> that fill themselves in.

Presets, preview, and export

Once you have a set of settings you like, save them: use the Format preset menu at the top of the settings, click Save, and give the preset a name. Load or delete presets from the same menu, so you can keep one recipe for your editor and another for your ebook.

The preview on the right updates as you change settings. Copy puts the compiled text on the clipboard, and Export (or Print, for the print format) writes the file. On the Mac a save panel asks where to put it; on iPhone and iPad it lands in Files ▸ Ahti ▸ Exports.

Other ways to get your work out

Compile is for the finished manuscript, but the project menu holds a few more focused exports:

  • Export Project writes your whole project, every document and all its metadata, to a single .json file you can archive or hand to someone. Import Project… reads one back in.
  • Export Comments & Footnotes saves every comment and footnote, grouped by document, as a Markdown file, handy for working through editorial notes.
  • Export as OPML writes your manuscript outline as an .opml file that other outlining apps can read.

And to save just one piece, right-click any document or folder in the binder and choose Export as Markdown… to write it, and everything under it, to a single Markdown file. On the Mac, remember that your whole vault is already a folder of Markdown files you own, so your writing is never locked away.

Snapshots, Backups & Settings #

Ahti keeps several safety nets under your writing and a handful of preferences to make it feel like yours. Snapshots freeze a version of a single document, backups save the whole project on a timer, and Settings tune the look and behavior of the app. Here is how each works.

Snapshots

A snapshot is a saved copy of one document's text at a moment in time, so you can rewrite boldly and still get the earlier version back. Take one from the inspector's Snapshots tab with Take Snapshot. Each snapshot in the list shows its title, when you took it, its word count, and how that compares to the document now. Double-click a snapshot's title to rename it (a single tap on iPhone and iPad). Restore rolls the document back, snapshotting the current text first as a safety net; Compare shows a word-by-word diff with additions and deletions highlighted; and Delete removes it.

To see snapshots across your whole project in one place, open Snapshots Manager from the project menu. The left side lists every document that has snapshots, with a filter box; the right side shows the chosen document's snapshots with the same rename, compare, restore, and delete controls.

Automatic backups

Where snapshots protect one document, backups protect the entire project. On the Mac, Ahti can save a full copy of your project into a hidden .ahti/backups folder inside your vault while you work. Turn this on in Project Settings ▸ Backups: switch on Auto-backup, then choose how many minutes of editing to wait between backups and how many recent backups to keep.

To browse or restore them, open Backups… from the project menu (or the View & restore backups… link in Settings). The list shows each backup by date, newest first. Back Up Now makes one on the spot, and Restore rolls the whole project back to a chosen backup, saving your current state as a fresh backup first so you can change your mind. Backups live with the vault, so this is a desktop feature.

Settings

Open Project Settings from the project menu, or press ⌘, on the Mac. Settings are stored with the project, so each book can look and behave a little differently. The dialog is organized into tabs:

  • General: choose a Light or Dark theme, set the app's Primary color (inherit the theme or pick a custom accent), turn 3D dice rolls on or off, and choose the Dice color.
  • Editor: pick the editor font (a built-in Serif, Sans, or Mono, or any font on your system) and its size, set the writing column's width, show or hide titles in Continuous view, and toggle spell check, highlight the current line, and Auto-link document titles.
  • Formatting: the project-wide defaults for line spacing, alignment, paragraph spacing, and first-line indent. A paragraph you format by hand keeps its own settings.
  • Backups: the auto-backup controls described above (shown when a vault is open).
  • Snippets: your CSS snippets, described next.
  • Defaults: save the current settings as the global defaults for new vaults you create later, or reset to the built-in factory settings. You can also export these preferences to a JSON file and import them into another project, without touching any of your writing.

CSS snippets

For readers who like to tinker, Ahti supports per-vault CSS snippets, small style files kept in a .ahti/snippets folder inside your vault. Manage them on the Snippets tab of Settings: toggle a snippet on or off, and it restyles the app live. It is an optional, Obsidian-style touch for making Ahti look exactly the way you want, and it is available where a vault lives on disk.

Project title and author

Click your project's title in the center of the toolbar to open the Project details, where you set the book's Title and Author (used on the compiled title page and in ebook metadata) and see when the project was created and last changed.