What an AI can and cannot do in your books
The short version
A connected AI works as you, in your books, and only when you ask. It can read and write much of what you can, it can't delete anything, and everything it does is saved in the book's history where you can see it and undo it. If that's all you wanted to know, you can stop here.
It sees what you see
When an AI connects, it signs in as you. So it can open the books you can open—your own, and any you've been invited to—and in each one it has the same role you do. On a book you own it can do nearly everything; on a book where you're an editor it can suggest and comment, as you would. It can't reach anyone else's books, and it can't do anything in yours that you couldn't do yourself.
What it can help with
- Reading. Your Library, a book's outline, chapters and scenes as prose, your notes, front and back matter, book lists, the codex, who's on a book, and past builds.
- Writing. Drafting new scenes or whole chapters, revising a scene, finding and replacing across a book, putting chapters and scenes in order, keeping and tagging notes, filling in front and back matter, and looking after the codex—entries, facts, links, calendars, even new types and fields.
- Organizing. Making series, books, parts, pen names and universes; moving a book from one series to another; setting imprints; building a book to PDF or EPUB and telling you where the file is.
- Reviewing. Leaving comments and replying to them, and proposing changes as suggestions for you to accept or reject.
- Tidying. Archiving a chapter, scene, note or codex entry, and bringing it back. Nothing it archives is lost.
What it can't do, on purpose
A few things are kept for people, no matter how an AI is connected:
- Deleting. No AI can delete a book, chapter, scene, note or entry. Deleting is something you do yourself, from the editor.
- Inviting or removing collaborators. An invitation goes out in your name, so it waits for you.
- Accepting or rejecting suggestions, resolving comments, or marking a scene reviewed. These decide what the book is, and that stays with you.
It won't trample your edits
When an AI rewrites a scene, it has to say which version of the scene it read. If you (or another AI) changed that scene in the meantime, the write is politely refused and the AI is told to read it again and reapply its change. Two hands in one scene can't quietly undo each other.
Everything is in the history
Each save an AI makes is a version in the scene's history, just like your own saves, and it shows under your name—the AI is acting for you. If you ever don't like what it did, open the scene's history and bring back the version you want.