Timelines
A timeline keeps the chronology of your story straight — what happens, in what order, and (if you track dates) when. Timelines are topics of the Timeline type, and each one holds a list of events. Your story starts with a Timeline topic, and each character can have their own.
Timeline events
Each event on a timeline records:
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Label | A short name for the event |
| Detail | A fuller description |
| Date | An optional in-world date. Events with dates sort chronologically; undated events keep the order you give them |
| Scene | An optional link to the manuscript scene where the event happens |
You add, edit, and remove events in the Topic Editor for the timeline. Removing an event asks for confirmation so you do not lose one by accident.
Linking events to scenes
An event can point at the scene in your manuscript where it takes place. When it does, you can click straight from the timeline to open that scene in the Document Editor . This keeps your chronology and your prose tied together — you always know which scene a given event was written in.
Letting the assistant build your timeline
You do not have to enter every event by hand. As you write, the assistant can extract events from your prose and add them to the timeline for you — either through the chat assistant’s
story tools or with the Document Assistant’s /update timeline
command, which reads the current scene and updates the timeline to match.
Rebuilding from your whole story
If your notes and your manuscript have drifted apart — for example after heavy revision — you can rebuild your topics and timelines from the full history of your project. This reprocesses everything and regenerates your topics, memoranda, and timeline events from scratch.
Rebuilding is destructive and cannot be undone — it deletes your existing topics, memoranda, and timeline events and regenerates them. Use it deliberately. It is found under Settings .
Related pages
- Topics & Memoranda — timelines are topics
- Scenes & the Document Editor — the scenes your events link to
- The Document Assistant — syncing a scene into your timeline