Structure & Navigation

Organise your book into a flexible hierarchy of elements — and navigate it with status tracking and a live sidebar.

What it does

Every book has a structure tree: a nested list of elements you can name and arrange however you like. There are no hard-coded types — an element can be a chapter, a part, a scene, an act, or anything else. You can create, reorder, rename, and nest these elements freely. Order and hierarchy are metadata — no files are moved when you rearrange. The sidebar shows the full tree at a glance, with status color dots tracking progress per element.

How to use it

Browse the sidebar — the left sidebar panel shows all elements in tree order. Status colors (if configured) appear as small dots next to each element.

Create an element:

• Click the + button next to any element to create a child element inside it.
• Click the + Chapter button at the bottom of the sidebar to append a new top-level element.
• New elements are created with a default title ("New Chapter") that you can rename immediately.

Rename an element:

• Click on an element's title in the sidebar to start editing it inline.
• Type your new title and press Enter to confirm, or Escape to cancel.

Reorder by drag:

• Drag an element by its handle to a new position. Its order and parent are updated; no content files are moved.
• To reparent, drag it into or out of a parent element.

Update status:

• Set a status (e.g. "draft", "revised", "final") on any element via the API. Status labels and their colors are configured in your book's config.json.
• If you promote a parent to a status ahead of its children, the app returns a list of lagging children — you decide whether to cascade the change.
• Note: A UI control for setting status per element is planned but not yet exposed in the sidebar.

Structural notes:

• Attach notes to any element — reminders, revision flags, or tags.
• Notes are not part of the element's content and are not included in exports.

Notes

• Element types are free-form strings — call them chapters, scenes, acts, or whatever fits your book. The hierarchy is the organising principle, not the type name.
• Status labels and their colors come from config.json. Elements without a configured status show no color dot.
• hidden and excluded flags are metadata only — they do not delete content.