Feature Guide

WriteCarrot is designed to drop you into writing, not bury you in menus. When you open the app, you land in an activity — your story editor, garden weeding, Sprout onboarding, or County Road — based on where you left off. When you want the dashboard, open Pause · home from the gear menu.

The daily loop

• Focus — pick your garden or story, focus areas, and goals for today, this week, or this month. If you haven't set focus yet, the app sends you to setup before dropping you in.
• Jump in — opening the app routes you to the tool that matches your focus (editor, weeding, Chat With, report, and more).
• Write or revise — use the editor, timed sessions, or field tools like weeding and Craft Map.
• Earn work points — every word counts; work on your focus earns a 2× bonus.
• Keep the streak — any writing activity in a day keeps your streak alive.

Key places

• Pause · home — stats, work points, and today's focus summary
• Focus — set or change your plan from the gear menu
• The Granary — your full story library (every row is a story)
• Field actions — a quest-style hub linking to weeding, the road, Craft Map, and more
• Story page — open any story for modes like Edit, Report, Chat With, Diminish, Rewrite (your own rewrites), and more

Sprout is the guided first session for new writers. It walks you through a short mad-libs-style loop: pick your writing identity, choose a theme, plant your first garden, and grow a tiny story with gentle prompts. You'll harvest your first crop when you're ready.

When you see it

• Automatically offered when you have no stories or gardens yet
• Includes week-one missions with small, concrete writing tasks
• You can always open Pause · home instead if you prefer to explore on your own

After Sprout, the app treats you like any returning writer — jump-in routing sends you to your active story or the next best field activity.

Every piece of writing lives as a story — a row in your crop inventory. Open The Granary to see all your stories, word counts, and harvest quality at a glance.

Working with stories

• Create a new story anytime from the gear menu
• Open a story to see its dashboard: quick links to every writing mode, activity history, and craft scores when a report exists
• Novel-shaped projects group chapters under a garden with chapter navigation in the gear bar
• Use Reorganize from story options to restructure sections and chapters

Story metadata

• Characters and Places panels track who and where appears in each chapter
• Scene outlines help you see structure without leaving the story

Story Gardens group related stories into themed plots — a novel and its spin-offs, a shared world, or drafts of the same project. Gardens unlock garden-wide streaks, weeding, and reader-question tracking across chapters.

Garden features

• Track collective progress and garden-specific writing streaks
• Set a garden constitution — your rules for tone, POV, or content — and weed against it
• Run the plot-tending mini-game for a light, low-pressure check-in on your library
• Scope Craft Map searches to one garden when you want focused practice

Tips

• One garden per major project or fictional world keeps things clear
• Pull weeds from any garden story — the weeding loop picks rough spots at random so you never face a boring single pass

Open Novel-shaped from the gear menu for a guided, sentence-by-sentence pass that builds a novel outline — protagonist, inciting incident, act structure, and more. When you finish, WriteCarrot saves the result as a garden with a story stub so you can keep writing in the editor.

• Good for starting a book when you know the shape but not every scene yet
• Novel gardens get chapter navigation in the gear bar as you add chapters
• Also available from individual garden dashboards for book-type gardens

Focus is your plan and the main driver for jump-in routing. Pick a garden or story, choose focus areas, and optional word goals — for today, this week, or this month. If you have stories but haven't set a focus, WriteCarrot asks you to before sending you anywhere else.

Focus areas control where you land

• Writing → story editor
• Editing → garden weeding or Declunk
• Planning → Chat With
• Character / world building → Characters or Places panels
• Submission prep → Story report

Full planner

• Word count goal and optional notes for the day
• Schedule extra sessions (editing, planning, etc.)
• Recommended mode shortcuts based on your focus areas
• Work on your focused project earns 2× work points

The card on Pause · home shows your focus — primary story, focus-area badges, word goal, and quick actions. Use Jump in — today's mode to go straight to the activity your Focus selected, or Mix it up for variety (weeding, County Road, granary, and more).

• If focus isn't set, the card prompts you to open Focus setup
• Change your plan anytime from the gear menu or Focus screen

Streaks reward consistency without punishing off days harshly — any writing activity counts, even a single word.

Three streak levels

• Overall — across all your writing
• Story — tied to one story
• Garden — tied to a garden's stories

Rules

• One day of activity keeps the streak alive
• Missing a day resets the counter; your record high is saved
• Optional daily word goals are separate from streak maintenance
• See all streaks and goals on your profile or the streaks detail page

Work Points measure how much real writing work you've done. They turn progress into something visible and shareable.

Earning points

• Points for new words added to stories
• Timed Entry and Add Words sessions both count
• 2× bonus when you write on your Focus project

Leaderboard

• Compare work points, total words, garden count, and more with other writers
• Track long-term growth on your profile

The editor is your main writing surface. Open any story and choose Edit — or let jump-in routing take you there directly when you open the app.

• Full-screen focus with your story text front and center
• Gear shortcuts for Speed Read, Diminish, Rewrite, Declunk, Report, Timed Entry, and Add Words without leaving the story
• Chapter navigation for novel-shaped gardens appears in the top gear bar

Two modes for productive sessions with clear targets.

Add Words (Goal Entry)

• Set a word-count goal and write until you hit it
• Great for "just 500 more words" days

Timed Entry

• Pick a session length and write against the clock
• Tracks words written and your pace during the session
• Ideal for building a daily time habit

Speed Read flashes your own story text one word at a time at an adjustable pace. Use it to review a draft quickly, spot awkward phrasing, or train reading speed on material you actually wrote.

• Available from any story with text
• Hover preview in the gear bar before opening full screen
• Adjust speed to match comfort or challenge level

Reorganize helps you restructure a story — move sections, split or merge blocks, and reshape chapters without losing text. Open it from the story dashboard when a draft has grown messy or you want to reorder scenes.

• Story-level tool — available from any story's options
• Useful after importing markdown or a long free-write
• Pair with scene outlines to see structure as you rearrange

Rewrite is a paragraph-by-paragraph practice tool — not AI rewriting your prose for you. The app pulls a passage from your story, shows it in context, and you rewrite it yourself in the text area. Replace it in the draft when you're happy, skip it, or delete it, then move on to the next one.

• Open from any story via the gear bar or story dashboard
• Great for revision drills and strengthening weak sections in your own words
• Also opens when weeding or Declunk sends you to fix a flagged line — same rewrite surface, with a note about why that bit was pulled
• Jump to Diminish from Rewrite when you want to tighten the whole paragraph around the current passage

Click the carrot logo anywhere in the app to open the Assistant — a conversational guide that knows your stories, gardens, streaks, and daily focus. It can recommend what to do next and launch you into the right tool with one tap.

What it can do

• Read your writer snapshot: your focus, recent work, streaks
• Suggest Craft Map drills or revision sessions
• Propose actions — open a story, start weeding, take the road
• Answer questions about how features work

The Assistant analyzes and nudges — it does not write your story for you.

Open a story and choose Chat With to have a conversation about your draft. Brainstorm plot turns, talk through character motivation, or work through writer's block with full story context.

• Story-aware — the AI reads your current text
• Best for exploration and feedback, not replacing your prose
• Pair with Report insights when you want data plus dialogue

Story Reports provide AI-powered analysis of your draft — strengths, weak spots, and where to focus revision energy.

What you get

• Writing quality: readability, grammar, vocabulary, style, voice, clarity, consistency
• Story elements: plot, characters, emotion, originality, setting, theme, pacing, dialogue
• Genre and target audience identification
• Completion estimate with percentage and stage
• Time estimates for writing, editing, and rewriting

Using reports well

• Generated when you open the report page; results are cached
• Scores feed into Craft Map branch suggestions on the story page
• Re-run after major edits to track improvement

Two AI-assisted revision modes — tighten prose or clean up flagged lines. For hands-on rewriting practice in your own words, use Rewrite (under Story tools).

Diminish

Work paragraph by paragraph. Condense and sharpen your prose, then compare your version to the original with AI feedback on clarity and impact.

Declunk

• AI scans for style issues, grammar, passive voice, hedges, and filler
• Review flagged sentences one at a time and rewrite each
• Also surfaces during garden weeding when rough sentences are pulled

Craft Map turns report scores and AI analysis into targeted practice. Open it from the gear menu or Field actions — it lives at /craft-map and shares the skill-practice engine. Pick a craft branch — description, pacing, dialogue, voice, tension, and more — and get passages from your own writing that need work in that area.

How to use it

• Choose a skill branch on the map
• Scope to all stories or one garden
• Each skill includes a short lesson and hints
• Jump straight into Rewrite practice or Diminish on suggested passages

Weeding is revision disguised as field work. The app pulls a random rough spot from your garden — clunky sentences, constitution violations, or other weeds — and drops you into a focused rewrite session.

Weeding modes

• Pull weeds — mixed sentence-level fixes across your garden
• Constitution weeding — check lines against your garden's own rules (POV, tone, content boundaries)
• Tend the plots — a light garden mini-game for checking in on your library rows

Requires at least one garden. Create a garden first, then open Field actions or weeding from Today's field.

County Road is the "you're going somewhere" mode. A scenic driving view sets the mood while you journal, capture reader-thought prompts, or append new words to a story — progress moves the sky and road forward as you write.

• Works even without a garden — good fallback when you need momentum
• Journal entries and road progress save to your account
• Pick a destination story to grow your crop as you drive

Reader Questions track what a reader would wonder while moving through your story — hooks, mysteries, and promises you've made. Available at the garden level for multi-chapter projects.

How it works

• AI extracts questions from each chapter and maps them across the garden
• See which questions are open, answered, or at risk of being forgotten
• Use the map to spot plot holes before beta readers do

Open Field actions from the gear menu for a quest-style directory of everything above — weeding, County Road, Craft Map, Word War, the Granary, and Today's field. No separate game engine; just your writing tools with discoverable entry points.

Word War

A timed word sprint without planning the whole day first. Set a duration, write fast, and see how many words you can produce in one push.

Track who and where appears in your fiction at the story or garden level.

Story level

• Characters — cast, interactions, and arc placeholders for the current chapter
• Places — settings, nested locations, and where they appear in the text
• Scene outline — structure view on the story dashboard

Garden level

• Garden Characters — cast across all chapters, relationships, character arcs, and scene appearances
• Garden Places — world map, place connections, and presence across chapters
• Open from Garden tools on any garden dashboard

Garden Brainstorming is a planning space for a whole plot — capture ideas, threads, and possibilities before or while you draft. Access it from Garden tools on a garden dashboard.

• Scoped to one garden so ideas stay with the project
• Links to stories in the garden for context
• Pair with Book Roadmap when you're shaping a longer work

Book Roadmap (garden tools) helps you plan a book-length project — beats, chapter statuses, and an AI-assisted roadmap chat tied to your garden. Track what's drafted, outlined, or still open.

• Best for novel-shaped or multi-chapter gardens
• Update chapter and beat status as you write
• Use alongside Reader Questions to close plot loops

Beyond story-level Chat With, you can open a garden-wide conversation from the garden dashboard — useful for series continuity, world rules, or planning across chapters.

• AI sees garden stats and story summaries, not just one chapter
• Seed prompts from garden tools to start focused threads

A garden constitution is your project's rule set — POV, tone, content boundaries, naming conventions, or anything you want enforced. Set it on the garden dashboard, then run Constitution weeding to find lines that break your rules.

• Your rules, not generic grammar advice
• Available from Field actions and garden weeding modes

Gardens support bringing work in and shipping it out without retyping.

• Markdown import — paste or upload markdown; split into stories by heading level
• Export — download garden content as markdown when you need a backup or external edit pass
• Nested plots — organize stories in a farm-grid layout with child plots for sub-projects

Your Profile (gear menu) shows long-term progress — work points, streaks, story and garden counts, recent activity, and a writer score with craft dimensions when enough report data exists.

• Achievement-style progress toward writing milestones
• Activity history across stories and gardens
• Complements the Leaderboard with your personal arc

Streaks appear on your profile and home stats. For a dedicated view of all your streaks — overall, per story, and per garden — including goals and records, open the streaks detail from your profile or visit /streaks/user when logged in.

Notes (linked from Settings or Pause · home) holds global metadata attached to your account — planning reminders, process notes, or anything not tied to one story or garden. Story and garden dashboards also have their own scoped notes panels.

Open Settings from the gear menu to customize your experience.

• Dark mode and visual atmosphere levels
• Spoken phrases / audio feedback toggles
• Email preferences (nudges, reminders)
• Story range export options for backups

The Leaderboard compares writers on work points, total words, gardens, and other harvest stats. It's optional motivation — your profile tracks personal progress regardless of rank.

Logged-in users can invite friends from Invite in the gear menu. Enter their email and they'll receive a link to create an account.

Share this guide with them — everything here works the same once they sign up.