Features
Everything on this page under “available” is built and covered by automated tests in Chromium and WebKit. WriteFlow is young, though: these features have so far been tried by tests and daily use of its developer, not by many people. What is still coming is listed at the end.
Writing and elements
Available
Invisible elements
Typing a paragraph creates an element; Enter splits it, Backspace joins – and both keep their lineage.
Versions at natural pauses
When you leave a paragraph or pause for a moment, a version is kept. Nothing is ever deleted.
History per paragraph
All versions with author, time and occasion; differences marked word by word; any earlier version can be restored.
Variants
Keep the current text under a name, write on, and switch between alternatives – with a safety net.
Aliases, copies, moves
Place the same element in another document, copy it as an independent element, or move it – its ID and history stay.
Freeze
A frozen document shows the text as it was at one moment, read-only; newer versions are offered, never pushed in.
Parts of a paragraph as elements
A passage, say a line of dialogue, becomes an element of its own without cutting the paragraph apart.
Notes and tags
Notes are elements themselves and travel with the text; tags order elements across the outline.
Links between elements
Link any element with any other, even across projects – like a slip box inside your running text.
Search and replace
Search across all projects; replace with regular expressions in a document, a chapter or the whole project, undone in one step. Frozen documents stay untouched.
Table of contents and outline
A table of contents that is always up to date, and an outline with folding chapters for long texts.
Split views and windows, live
Two views or several windows on the same text; changes appear in the other window in under 100 ms.
Structure and types
Available
Types with fields
Character, place, scene, term, thesis – with text, number, date, choice, yes/no, reference and list fields. Headings, quotations and notes use the same mechanism.
Tables
All elements of a type as a table: sort, filter, edit cells – editing a cell edits the element.
Cards
Chapters or elements as cards; dragging a card moves the chapter in the manuscript.
Relations and mentions
Named relations in both directions (“set in” / “setting of”); names of characters are found in the text and listed as mentions.
Timeline
Chronology, narrative order or both side by side, with flashbacks marked and calendar or relative dates such as “day 3”.
Network
Relations and links as a graph, filterable, one to four steps out from an element.
Templates
“Novel”, “Academic thesis” or empty – with types, document skeleton, views and citation style. Save your own projects as templates to pass on.
Sources and academic work
Available
DOI and ISBN
Add a source with a single entry, looked up at Crossref, the German National Library and Open Library.
Catalogue search
Crossref, OpenAlex, the German National Library and Semantic Scholar at once; the same DOI from several catalogues is one hit.
Open-access PDFs
Find and load freely available PDFs; links to Google Scholar and your university’s link resolver.
Zotero, BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON
Take over your Zotero 7 library through its local API without duplicates, or import bibliography files.
My library
Your sources belong to you, not to one manuscript: an encrypted library across all projects, fast with thousands of entries.
Quotations as elements
Mark a passage as a quotation with source and page; every use of a quotation can be found from its source.
PDF reader next to the text
Mark a passage in the PDF and get a quotation with page and position; full-text search in your PDFs.
Citation styles
APA, ISO 690, Chicago and any CSL style; footnote styles with “ibid.” and short forms, in print and as real Word footnotes.
Provenance and integrity
Available
Provenance of every character
Typed, pasted, quoted, written by an AI or imported from your own earlier text – kept through splitting, joining, copies, variants and aliases.
Pasted – from where?
Each paste can be explained in a word – source, transcript, own earlier text, AI outside WriteFlow. The question never blocks your writing.
A description, not a score
Shares of own, AI, quoted and pasted text, with and without quotations – deliberately without an overall value like “87 % genuine”.
Provenance page in every export
Word, Markdown, PDF and print can carry a page “Provenance of the text”: shares, every paste with its explanation, AI use and a checksum.
Authorship per version
Who created an element and who made which version – co-authorship you can follow.
AI
Available
Permission levels
Nothing, read, comment, suggest, arrange, write – set in the settings, per project and per document or chapter; the most specific applies.
Enforced by the engine
Permissions are technology, not politeness: an AI without the right to write cannot change a word, and refused attempts are logged.
Audit trail
Every request, model call and tool step, each entry chained to the previous one by a hash; stored encrypted and exportable as JSON.
Provider of your choice
Anthropic and OpenAI-compatible services, down to a local model via Ollama – with your own key. Each connection shows where your text goes.
Chat and annotations
Feedback in the sidebar, bound to the version it refers to; an incognito mode sends only the selection.
Suggestions, passage by passage
Accept a suggestion fully, partly or not at all; only passages that really changed count as AI text.
External AI via MCP
Claude Code and other agents can work in a project through MCP – within the same permissions, visible in the status bar and revocable with one click.
Security and privacy
Available
Everything encrypted
Projects, backups and the audit trail are stored with AES-256-GCM; servers only see encrypted, signed envelopes.
Devices with their own keys
Signed device identities, pairing by comparing a code, and a new key when a device is removed.
Recovery code
End to end without a back door: a recovery code unlocks your projects in any browser.
Private area
Private notes on shared texts, encrypted with a key of their own; they never reach a project, an export or an AI.
No telemetry
The error log records steps, never text.
Collaboration and synchronisation
Available
Local-first
Your data lives in the browser or with the local companion; WriteFlow works without a server, offline too.
Real merging
Changes from several windows, devices and people are merged, not overwritten.
Your own devices
Pair your computers; projects appear and changes arrive live – the server in between sees only ciphertext.
Groups with roles
Accounts, groups, invitations by e-mail; roles read, comment, write and manage, enforced on the devices.
Presence
Cursors of other windows, devices and group members in their colour, encrypted and never stored.
Goals
Available
Writing goals
Word goals per project, document or chapter, with a deadline, a daily goal and writing days per week.
Only your own words count
Pasted text and AI text do not count; what you type into them does.
Writing days from your versions
No sessions to start: WriteFlow knows from the versions when you wrote. No streak pressure, no gamification.
Export and print
Available
Word
Headings, footnotes in your citation style, a real table-of-contents field and the provenance page.
PDF and Markdown
PDF from the print view with page numbers in the table of contents; Markdown for everything else.
Print with good breaks
No heading alone at the bottom of a page, no widows and orphans, chapters on a new page if you like.
Backups
A backup file with the complete history, encrypted by default; old backups stay readable.
Interface
Available
Command Tool
Cmd/Ctrl+K reaches every function from the keyboard; menus, toolbar and context menus offer the same commands.
Looks and themes
Classic, Compact or Focus; light, dark, sepia or like the system.
Keyboard throughout
Menu bar, tabs and menus can be used with the keyboard alone.
Fast with long texts
A fixed budget per keystroke keeps typing fluid even with 100,000 words and more; everything else waits for a pause.
Coming
Built but still being tested, or planned. We list it here so that nobody mistakes it for a promise of today.
Mac app In testing
Built and working, not yet signed by Apple and not yet tested in daily use by many people.
English, German and French throughout In testing
Language choice is there; parts of the interface are still being translated.
Sharing a library with a group In testing
Built, not yet covered by its own browser test.
The browser on its own Planned
Synchronising directly and encrypted between browser and server, without any local program.
Passkeys and single sign-on Planned
Unlock with a passkey; sign in with Google, Apple or Microsoft, and via eduGAIN for universities.
Signed builds and installation as an app Planned
So that the browser version also keeps a fixed, verifiable version of the code.
iPhone and iPad Planned
The same code base, synchronising directly with your server.
Windows and Linux Planned
Technically possible with the same app shell; not scheduled yet.
Comments by people Planned
The role “comment” exists; the interface for human comments and suggested changes is still missing.
Process evidence for universities Planned
Hash chains, device signatures, qualified time stamps and an open-source verifier.
EPUB, standard manuscript pages, LaTeX, Word import Planned
More formats for publishers and for bringing existing manuscripts in.
Several servers and federation Planned
A device with several servers, worldwide addresses for elements, aliases across projects.