Asten
Try the pre-alpha

Shipped, next, later, and never.

What Asten does today, what is being built next, what comes later, and what Asten will not do. There are no dates.

A country road beneath tall trees and a stormy blue sky, two small figures walking on it.

In short

The current code includes the desk, canon with fifteen rules in seven families, rule-based reading of the page, method packs, cast, two clocks with calendars, optional world tools, compile and import, the Word and Docs add-ins, generated API contracts, and local-first storage. Next: verified and signed installers, tested Android and iOS shells, and verified ARM builds. Never: writing your prose or training on it.

Shipped

Built and working in the current code.

  • The deskBinder, rich-text page, comments, find, word counts, letter page view, track-change marks, named snapshots, an append-only history you can verify, blame, and drafts you can merge.
  • CanonFacts with status, context, story-time span, confidence, and a source anchored to the sentence that settled them. Entities with aliases and an introduction point.
  • Reading the pageDeterministic perception, no model: names and aliases across scripts, hair and eyes, height and age, where someone is, alive or dead, who is married to whom. Dialogue, belief, dream, and frame stories are separate contexts, so a lie is not a contradiction; a memory is weighed at the story time you give it.
  • Fifteen canon rulesAttributes (CANON-E013–E015), lifecycle (E101–E103), two clocks and a temporal network (E201–E203), travel (E301), knowledge (E401), relations and genealogy (E501–E503), and author invariants (E601), plus name hygiene (NAME-W001–W004) and a setup ledger (PLOT-I001). The catalogue also holds CANON-E302, CANON-E602 and PLOT-I002, which no rule raises yet.
  • The ScalesEvery mark explains itself in a numbered chain, names the most likely slip, and offers repairs you own: add an event, mark the scene a memory, retire a fact, keep your sentence. Suppressions know when their evidence changed. Bisect finds the edit that raised a mark.
  • Two clocks and calendarsStory time as day counts, Gregorian dates (“winter of 1890”), or a fictional calendar with your own months, plus relative placements (“three days after the siege”). Flashbacks are a choice: Asten argues only inside a run you declared continuous.
  • Method packsScribe, Lifecycle, Clocks, Relations, Knowledge, Atlas, Invariants, and the optional Diction watch. Suppressions and baselines stored with the project.
  • WorldWall, atlas, and dossier. Spark, sketched, settled. Routes with travel times feed the atlas checks.
  • Compile and importMarkdown, plain text, Fountain, HTML, .docx, EPUB 3, and Final Draft (.fdx); import of all but EPUB. PDF by printing HTML.
  • GuestsWord task pane and Google Docs sidebar, sideloaded. They pair once with a six-digit code and hold a token you can revoke.
  • Local-first storageSQLite on your disk, a desktop shell that embeds the local API, no account, no sync, no telemetry. The API answers only to paired clients.
  • API contractsTypeScript contracts generated from the Rust types and checked for drift, and an OpenAPI 3.1 document served by the local API.
  • Pre-alpha 0.0.1aThe first public release: unsigned desktop builds for Windows x64 and Linux x64 that run the engine on your machine, and a hosted copy in the browser that gives each visitor a private sandbox for 24 hours.
  • Pre-alpha 0.0.1b: a complete desktop deskReal importers (Word with tracked changes and comments, Markdown, HTML, plain text with chapter splitting), a project file you can move to another computer, library backups with restore, rename and delete, and an optional bring-your-own-key assistant that explains, searches and proposes, never writes, and shows you the exact request before it is sent.

Next

Being worked on now. No dates.

  • Installers for the other desktop platformsReleases 0.0.1a and 0.0.1b ship Windows x64 and Linux x64. Windows on ARM, macOS on Apple silicon and Intel in one universal app, and Linux on aarch64 are configured; their installers still need building and testing on hardware. macOS comes later.
  • Signed installersCode-signed installers for Windows, macOS and Linux, so the system no longer warns before the first run. The 0.0.1a and 0.0.1b builds are unsigned.
  • Phones and tabletsThe one-column layout, with the binder as a drawer and the Scales in a bottom sheet, is built. Installing it from a phone’s browser requires trusted HTTPS to your own computer. The Android and iOS apps from the same shell still need signing and device testing.

Later

On the plan, behind the work above.

  • Trained perception, still localSmall classifiers for mentions, attributes, time phrases, and who is speaking, for languages and sentences the rules miss. They only propose, nothing becomes canon without you, and none of them generates text. The compiler that judges contradictions stays rule-based.
  • More viewsGraph, maps with scale, and boards.
  • More packsMystery clue ledgers, screenplay sequences, and other methods, always optional, with a runtime for third-party packs.
  • CollaborationA second author on the same project without giving up offline work. This is still a design question, not a feature.
  • Store listingsThe Word and Google Docs add-ins in the Microsoft and Google stores, and the phone apps in Google Play and the App Store, once they are signed and tested.

Never

Promises, not plans.

  • Writing your proseNo generate, continue, rewrite, or autocomplete for your manuscript.
  • Training on your wordsNo manuscript is used to train any model, by Verne or anyone Verne works with.
  • Locking up your filesYour projects stay readable and exportable without a subscription or a server.
  • Craft doctrine by defaultStyle advice stays in optional packs, switched off until you ask.
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Try the pre-alpha

Open the workbench in your browser on a sample novel, or download release 0.0.1b for Windows or Linux.

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