Chapter 2: Mira’s hair is auburn. Chapter 19: she pushes back her black hair.
An attribute you settled, quietly drifting.
CANON-E013
Pre-alpha 0.0.1b
Let AI be your editor, not your writer.
Asten keeps the record a good editor keeps: the facts you settle about your story, like a hair color, a death, or the day the harbor burned. When a page disagrees, it takes a red pencil to the margin. It never writes a word for you, and your manuscript never leaves your computer.
- No AI writes your prose
- No account
- No cloud
- Not used for training
1 The lamp at Gull Point
Mara Vell climbed the last ninety steps with the oil can knocking against her knee. Mara’s grey eyes stung in the wind.
2 Night crossing
When she turned back, the lamp at Gull Point was out. Mara’s brown eyes found the headland and found nothing there.
Chapter 2 gives Mara brown eyes. Chapter 1 settled them as grey. The pencil circles “brown eyes” and asks which to keep.
CANON-E013Continuity slips in a long manuscript
A long manuscript is written over months, and a detail set down in chapter 2 is hard to keep in mind by chapter 19. Three common kinds of slip:
Captain Oren dies in chapter 9. In chapter 14 he pours the tea.
A life that continues after a settled death.
CANON-E101
The harbor burns on day 17. The next scene is day 4, and it isn’t a flashback.
Reading order and story time, crossing by accident.
CANON-E201
Once the facts involved are settled, Asten marks each of these in the margin with the code shown. The marks stay on your computer.
Black ink for your text, red for Asten’s marks
An Egyptian scribe’s palette held two inks: black for the text, red to mark it. Asten follows the same split. It never changes what you write. It adds marks in the margin, each with a code, both sides of the disagreement, and the actions you can take.
AI writing tools often
- offer to write the scene
- suggest rewrites of your sentences
- send your draft to a server
Asten
- does not generate or rewrite text
- shows the evidence for each mark
- keeps your files on your machine
Weighing a page against the canon
Three examples, with the wording Asten’s engine gives each mark. Pick a word on the page and the balance settles. The sentence itself is never changed.
Your page
Mira pushed her black hair out of her eyes and listened for the bell.
Your canon
Mira · hair · auburn
settled in chapter 2
CANON-E013Mira’s hair was settled as auburn.
- ① Settled: Mira · hair · auburn
- ② Chapter 19 says: “black”
- ③ No event between an unplaced time and day 40 changes Mira’s hair.
Most likely slip: ② (93%)
Mira’s hair was settled as auburn.
How Asten works
There is no setup step. Asten builds a record of your story from the facts you settle, and adds a mark only when a page disagrees with that record.
Write
Open a scene and type. No setup, no character forms, no world bible required. The binder keeps chapters, scenes, notes, and sources in order.
Settle
When a detail matters, settle it as a fact: Mira · hair · auburn. It joins your canon, with a status, an optional span of story time, and a source.
Notice
When a later page disagrees with what you settled, Asten marks it in red in the margin with a code, both sides of the disagreement, and your options.
Decide
Keep the sentence, update canon, record a change, or silence the rule. Asten records your decision. It never rewrites a word.
The writing desk
The binder on the left, the page in the middle, and Asten’s marks in the margin.
Chapter 19
The harbor at dawn
The tide came in grey over the harbor at Veld, carrying the smell of last night’s fires.
Mira pushed her black hair out of her eyes and listened for the bell.
“You’re late,” Oren said, though he had only just arrived himself.
What Asten includes
The desk
A calm manuscript editor with a binder, comments, find, page view, and track changes.
Read moreCanon checks
Settle a fact once. Asten marks any page that disagrees, and shows both sides.
Read moreCast
Characters and other entities with aliases, notes, and the facts you’ve confirmed.
Read moreTwo clocks
Story time and reading order, kept separately, so flashbacks are a choice and not a mistake.
Read moreWorld
An optional wall, atlas, and dossier. Spark, sketch, settle. Never a gate.
Read moreThe compiler
Deterministic rules with stable codes, suppressions, snapshots, and an append-only history.
Read moreMethod packs
Optional sets of rules and hints. Turn on what helps; nothing becomes doctrine.
Read moreWord & Google Docs
Compile to Markdown, Fountain, HTML, .docx, EPUB, and Final Draft. Optional Word and Docs add-ins talk to your own machine.
Read moreLocal-first
One file on your computer. No account, no sync, no telemetry, no training.
Read moreStory time and reading order
Asten records when each scene happens in the story separately from where it sits in the book. It compares the two only inside a run of scenes you have declared continuous, so a flashback raises no mark.
Thoth, keeper of timeA story retold by Plutarch says Thoth won five extra days from the moon, so that a birth forbidden on every day of the year could happen on days that belonged to no month.
Reading order · run “The siege”, continuous
- Ch. 8Oren sailsday 14
- Ch. 9The stormday 15
- Ch. 10The harbor burnsday 17
- Ch. 11 · flashback, outside the runMira remembers the fireday 4
- Ch. 12Landfall at Veldday 18
Story time
No scene in the run steps backward in story time. A scene taken out of the run is not compared.
No clock marks.
Optional world notes
Places, histories, and rules can be kept as sparks, sketches, or settled entries. Only settled entries become canon, and none of it is required before you write.
Below the sand
settled
The atlas
Veld sits east of the reef, two days’ sail from the capital. Pinned on a rough map.
Who Asten is for
Novelists
For long manuscripts where details drift between chapters.
For novelistsWorldbuilders
For fantasy and science-fiction writers whose world is bigger than the book.
For worldbuildersScreenwriters
For scripts with timelines, reveals, and a cast that has to stay straight.
For screenwritersFan-fiction writers
For writers keeping their own version of an existing canon.
For fan-fiction writersAI tinkerers
For people who use AI daily and want a writing tool that draws a clear line.
For ai tinkerers
Your project stays on your computer
Each project is one SQLite file on your own disk. Asten has no account, no sync, and no telemetry, so nothing in it sends your manuscript anywhere.
One file, yoursA SQLite file on your computer.
No accountNothing to sign up for or lose.
No telemetryAsten sends no usage data. This site runs no analytics.
No trainingYour manuscript is not used to train any model.
Deterministic rules, run locally
No model runs inside Asten. The checks are rules with stable codes, and the same project always produces the same marks. The planned perception models are small local classifiers that propose facts for you to confirm; they do not generate text.
- Rust
- SQLite
- Axum on 127.0.0.1
- React
- TypeScript
- Tauri
$ curl -s -H "authorization: Bearer $ASTEN_TOKEN" \ 127.0.0.1:4317/api/v1/projects/$PROJECT/story/diagnostics CANON-E013 warning Mira's hair was settled as auburn. ① Settled: Mira · hair · auburn ② Chapter 19 says: “black” (Chapter 19) ③ No event between an unplaced time and day 40 changes Mira's hair. Most likely slip: ② (93%) Fixes: Add an event · Mark the scene as a memory · auburn holds until day 39 · Retire “auburn” · Silence this mark · Keep my sentence
Current status
What works in the current code, what does not exist yet, and what Asten will not do.
Works today
- The desk: binder, comments, page view, track changes, snapshots
- Canon with fifteen continuity rules, read from the page and from what you settle
- Cast, two clocks, optional world
- Compile to Markdown, plain text, Fountain, HTML, .docx, EPUB, and FDX; import of all but EPUB
Not yet
- Signed installers, and a macOS build
- Android and iOS apps tested on devices
- Trained perception models (the reading is rule-based)
- Collaboration
Never
- Writing your prose
- Training on your manuscript
- Locking your files behind a server
From the journal
Let AI be your editor, not your writer
The tedious half of writing is remembering what you already decided; the half that makes a book yours is everything else.
Read
How to keep continuity in a long novel
Readers forgive a lot, but they notice when the dead captain gives an order.
Read
Story time vs. reading order: flashbacks without contradictions
Your story has two clocks, and most timeline mistakes happen when you only watch one of them.
ReadCommon questions
Does Asten write for me?
No. Asten never generates prose. It remembers the facts you settle and marks the places where your draft disagrees with them. Every word on the page is yours.
Does Asten use AI?
The checks run no model: Asten reads names and plain attributes from the page with fixed rules and weighs them against facts you confirm. The desktop app has an optional assistant (off by default) that can use a model on your machine, or a cloud provider with your own key and consent, to explain marks and propose facts for you to confirm. It never writes your prose.
Will my writing be used to train AI?
Never. Your manuscript stays in a file on your computer. Verne never receives it, and Asten will never send it to train a model.
Do I have to build a world or a story bible first?
No. You can start with a blank scene. Settle facts only when they matter, and the cast, timeline, and world notes stay optional.
What does Asten check today?
Seven families of rules, all deterministic: attributes that disagree with your canon or with each other (CANON-E013 to E015), lifecycle such as acting after a settled death (E101 to E103), the two clocks and dates that cannot all be true (E201 to E203), a journey that does not fit the time (E301), who knows what and when (E401), relations and genealogy (E501 to E503), and rules you write yourself (E601). Name hygiene and a setup ledger come along. Optional diction hints are off until you turn them on.
How do I get Asten?
Try the pre-alpha: open the hosted copy in your browser, or download release 0.0.1b for Windows x64 or Linux x64 from the download page. macOS comes later. The builds are unsigned, so your system warns before the first run.
Try the pre-alpha
Open the workbench in your browser on a sample novel, or download release 0.0.1b for Windows or Linux.