Changelog

Follow up on the latest improvements andΒ updates.

RSS

improved

fixed

Codex

Prompts

AI

October 2, 2024

This release updates the system prompt model lists with the following additions and changes:
  1. Added more free models like Gemma 2, Llama 3.1 and the like
  2. Added L3.1 Euryale 70b as a more affordable NSFW option
  3. Moved Claude 2.0 from Popular to just the "Anthropic" group
Other changes
  • The codex matching now takes apostrophes in plural suffixes into account (e.g. "Peter's" is now matched in full instead of just "Peter")
  • Chat threads in the codex appearance tab are now sorted in reverse chronological order
  • Archived codex entries that are used in POV settings are no longer being shown or added to prompts
  • Fixed errors around empty OpenRouter custom routing options
This update includes a couple fixes for when data can't be saved and reduce data loss on unreliable connections as well as improving detection around logged out users.
  1. Sometimes the internet can be intermittent, so we added a way to retry a request when those "failed to fetch" errors happen. This way changes are not lost when they could not be saved on first try.
  2. In addition, we added custom error handling for the "Unauthorized" errors; we now give you a warning and an option to reload the page.
  3. We also improved the error message for when you are not allowed to change or update something. The system now gives a better help text on why that is.

improved

fixed

Chat

Write

Codex

Prompts

Export

Teams

September 19, 2024

Full Project and chat exports are here
image
You can now export your chats just like you can export your codex or snippets! In addition, the novel export screen now has a section to include other aspects of your novel to get a single "full project" export of your novel.
Codex
  • Added a new global setting for the codex to always create new entries in the series scope (helpful when most of your entries are part of a bigger universe)
  • Fixed support for codex entries with accents or other special characters in the codex search bar (e.g.
    Γ‰lise
    can now be found via
    Elise
    as well).
  • Fixed being unable to upload a thumbnail to a series codex entry that you were invited as an editor to.
Write
  • Added the ability to show/hide scene beats in read-only novels as well as revision histories.
  • Fixed adding an empty paragraph in scenes that only have a blockquote
Chat
image
  • Added a new "split left/right" option to chats so you can turn them into a side panel when you want to work in another view
  • Added new "Empty threads" filters to chats. Sometimes you just start a new thread and don't end up using it. This makes those easier to find.
  • Fixed the chat message taking your input focus away when the AI has finished writing. This was annoying when you were editing a codex entry as you were waiting.
  • Fixed "Extract" being available in a read-only novel (was kind of useless since you can't save anything)
Prompts
  • Update model filtering to support new OpenAI o1 models
  • Updated prompt parsing to keep indentation when calling functions. This means XML indentation should be kept when desired.
Other changes
  • You can now subscribe to Novelcrafter anytime throughout your trial (and not just near the end of it)
  • Added number of members + shared contents in team settings tabs
  • Fixed team lists with more than 25 members not loading all user details at once
  • Various other bug fixes and improvements

improved

fixed

Plan

Write

Review

Prompts

September 5, 2024

Word counting changes
This update makes word counting to be more in line with Scrivener. Both, Word and Google Docs (which we have used as a guideline so far) have issues counting words with em-dashes, punctuation and other special characters. The updated word counting is now more like what people would count as real words.
For comparison:
  • I wish you would - oh, never mind.
    now counts as 7 words, not 8.
  • It was … complicated.
    now counts as 3 words, not 4.
Performance improvements
We internally upgraded to a new version of the framework Novelcrafter is using to render stuff on screen. While there were great performance improvements, the memory consumption should be even less for bigger novels now. Though we did extensive testing, as always, please report if some things aren't updating quite right.
Update to Mistral models in system prompts
For all system prompts, we now configured all Mistral models to go through the "Mistral" provider on OpenRouter. While OpenRouter does allow calls to "Azure" as well, those have a special moderation layer that can cut off the output too early if it detects an issue, causing you to loose money as the AI already started responding. Novelcrafter cannot show you when these "in-stream moderation" errors happen yet, so we opted for this solution for the time being.
Other Changes
  • Added the ability to copy all scene beats into the clipboard (for scenes, chapters and acts)
  • Added a "Hide my email" setting for YouTubers/presenters/teachers that don't want to have their personal mail on display.
  • Fixed some codex detection issues on older versions of Safari. We're now using a fallback that should work OK for the most part. If issues still arise, please update your browser.
  • Fixed not being able to dissolve collapsible sections
  • Fixed chapter titles (and automatic numbering) not always refreshing/updating and being in an inconsistent state
  • Fixed a few paragraph indentation inconsistencies with beats/additions and sections
  • Fixed some visual shifting when showing a horizontal cursor before a beat at the start of a scene
  • Fixed codex thumbnail uploads saving to the wrong entry on slow connections, when immediately switching to another one
  • Fixed
    context.previousBeat
    always picking first beat of a scene, instead of the one before

improved

fixed

Write

Review

Import

Collaboration

August 31, 2024

This release mostly contains bug fixes and general improvements:
Manuscript improvements
  • Added some mitigations for the wild cursor jumping. While not totally gone, we hope these changes help in some cases. Please keep the reports coming if it's still occurring!
  • The scene beat validation will no longer nag about entries with nested references having no description, or that your global entries have short descriptions. Since these are common use cases, it makes no sense to have a constant warning for those.
  • Added a selection outline to scene beats and collapsible sections to indicate if they're focused (e.g. when you used the drag handle to move them around)
  • Fixed not being able to put a cursor between a scene beat and a following section
Other changes
  • Added an additional "Add Chapter" button to the end of Acts when in the Outline plan view
  • Added the ability to switch the codex "filter by tag" to "match any", instead of requiring entries to match all selected tags
  • Fixed some errors with
    .docx
    imports where formatted text was incorrectly interpreted for headings and other parts
  • Fixed some issues around handling Asian languages (like Thai)
  • Fixed some visual inconsistencies with sharing novels and series depending on your plan and/or team status
  • Fixed the "characters per scene" chart sometimes not loading correctly
  • Some optimizations around app loading times and general memory usage (e.g. previously, prompt previews were kept in RAM indefinitely until reloading Novelcrafter)
  • Fixed the "you're no longer logged in" modal appearing on App start when on a slower connection
  • Added a max-width to menus for when names get too long (e.g. series selection)
  • Some additional improvements for chat extraction with heading + blockquote cases
  • Various other bug fixes and improvements

improved

fixed

Codex

August 23, 2024

This release changes the routing to Novelcrafter itself, which should increase stability and reduce latency across the globe, especially for people in Oceania or in rural places.
In addition, the following minor changes have been made:
  • Fixed some issues around codex matching for entries with quotes in their name

new

improved

fixed

Codex

AI

Teams

Collaboration

August 19th, 2024

Teams for your friends, family, colleagues and more!
To create a team, you need the Specialist plan, but everyone else can benefit as long as they have any plan!
image
Let's say you're working on more than one book or series, and you have to add a new person to your writing projects. Before now, it was quite tedious to add them individually, but with the new teams feature you can set one up once and simply share your novels or series with everyone involved!
You can reach the
Teams
feature through the settings dialog.
You can invite members by email, and even have everyone set whether they want to be visible to the others. Team leads can also decide if sharing of novels and/or series with the team should be allowed and even hide the member list entirely (e.g. for more "public" teams with dozens of members).
With the introduction of teams we also reworked how invitations work and look; only owners and team leads can now see the emails of invited people/members. For privacy reasons we've disabled showing them for anybody else.
Shared with me - At a glance
image
For those that have a lot of novels or series shared with them, there was no easy way to figure out who owns what or where you're all involved with. The new "Shared with me" tab in the settings lists out all the content either shared with you directly, or through a team, and allows an easy way to leave them, too.
Move codex entries to... somewhere else?
image
Sometimes an entry doesn't fit into your current novel or series, or has been mistakenly added to the wrong project. The new "Move to..." feature allows you to move the codex entry somewhere else altogether!
Performance optimizations for large codexes
Some people have started to build up hundreds of codex entries and the performance for matching your entries has tanked quite a bit.
A new system has been built that should work much better with entries that share a common structure (e.g. "Town name - entrance", "Town name - central", or things like "Country - Flora & Fauna", "Country - Towns").
In addition, any archived scenes you have will no longer be looked through either, since it didn't make much sense in the first place.
Other changes
  • Codex additions now have a double-newline between them when sent to the AI (previously, they were all concatenated together)
  • Any dialogs left open will no longer be saved as part of the "remember where I left-off" memory. That was a bit confusing.
  • Fixed deleting prompts leaving a local copy behind until page reload
  • Some additional fixes to chat/snippet extraction for weirdly formatted lists
  • You can now open the series page from the codex series header
  • Added a little list of providers for the OpenRouter provider routing settings in custom models
  • Various dialogs (like settings or revision history) on mobile now have a fixed height and some other improvements with regards to usability
  • Various other bug fixes and improvements

improved

fixed

Chat

Codex

Prompts

Snippets

August 13th, 2024

Archive (almost) everything
Novels, codex entries, snippets and chats can now be archived and restored. Don't want to delete them right away, or declutter your content? You can now archive them and bring them back any time.
If you want to see your archived content, look for the funnel/filter button:
image
You can see a detailed guide over on our documentation: https://docs.novelcrafter.com/en/articles/9733992-archiving
This also means that archived novels are hidden by default on your home screen (clear the filter, or toggle to "archived" to view them again).
Custom prompts
After some further testing, we are now including the name of the character for each scene in the novel outline. When using chat you can now talk about his & her stories or other setups with either single POVs or alternating viewpoints!
This release also fixes indentation issues in prompts - any indentations or extra spaces at the start of the line are now kept all properly (this should improve AI prompt adherence in some cases). This is helpful when you have multi-level markdown lists for writing rules in your prompts.
Other changes
This release also contains a couple important bug fixes:
  • Fixed the 'unknown' environment banner appearing when it shouldn't
  • Fixed the codex matching not working after weird whitespaces, or at start of lines within chat
  • Fixed "continue where left off" novel covers being too big on the home screen for mobile users
  • Fixed custom codex categories still being visible after deletion (until reload)
  • Some other little bug fixes and tweaks

improved

fixed

Chat

AI

Import

August 5th 2024

Novel Outline Updates for Chat
For those who have experienced issues with AI not recognizing or miscounting scenes/chapters, this update should significantly improve the experience:
The internal structure for the "Include novel outline" feature has been updated to use a more structured approach (XML instead of Markdown). This should
help guide the AI when discussing specific acts, chapters, or scenes
. We've also made scenes with content but no summary visible to the AI, preventing it from underestimating the number of scenes in your story.
A new use case now possible:
  1. Create a new, empty novel
  2. Apply a template from the "Create from Outline" feature
  3. Open a new chat and select "Novel Outline"
  4. Ask the AI to populate your outline with an idea
  5. The AI should now use the exact act and chapter names, as well as the precise scene count from your plan view
If you prefer the old behavior for your custom prompts (although we consider this a major improvement), you can change your
novel.outline
call(s) to
novel.outline("hierarchical")
.
Other chat updates:
  • The
    Chat prompt preview no longer requires a message
    and works with a blank message
  • Changing the prompt and/or model for a new chat thread now properly saves it as a new chat (this was already the case, but empty chats were only visible after refreshing the page or reopening the novel)
  • The chat will now show a little "knowledge cutoff" warning so you know which messages will actually be sent to the AI.
  • Fixed some minor issues with chat extraction involving nested lists
  • Resolved interactivity inconsistencies when accessing chats in shared novels or subscription plans without workshop chat
Import Improvements
We've updated the novel import dialog, including a new setting to enhance imports for users who only use scene dividers. New help text has been added to better explain the options.
image
For those that don't want to bother with titles and the like, and only have a single-chapter novel, the importer now supports those as well!
Other Changes
  • Fixed the "[...] maximum context length [...] However, you requested about [...]" error caused by a recent internal change in OpenRouter
  • Resolved an issue where an extracted chapter, when added to your outline, would not save correctly and would lose its association with the act upon page refresh
  • The export button now always appears when the sidebar is collapsed
  • Implemented additional performance optimizations for writing in scenes
  • Fixed visual issues with some dropdown menus not overlaying content properly
  • Various other fixes and improvements

improved

fixed

Write

Prompts

July 31st 2024

𝑻𝒉𝒆 π’Žπ’π’π’•π’‰π’π’š π’Žπ’–π’”π’†: August Writing Bingo πŸŒ»πŸ“
We got something exciting to share with you: going forward, every month, we'll send out a new, interactive theme machine for writing prompts and more.
For August, we prepared a fancy Bingo grid. It's there to help you find new and exciting ideas and hone your writing skills along the way. Choose a row or column yourself, use the randomizer, or take a chance with the chaos button! Play around with it here: https://monthly-muse.com/1 (you can also reach it via the NC website.)
If the theme machine doesn't come up with something great, we also included some creative sparks for more fresh ideas.
Updated Model Lists
We cleaned up the current model lists for the system prompts and
finally added GPT-4o mini
! This should make longer chat sessions a lot more budget friendly.
In addition, this release includes the following bugfixes and such:
  • The "start writing" placeholder should no longer appear where you couldn't actually start typing
  • Fixed an internal editor issue where any ellipses and em-dashes would not be replaced properly
  • Fixed an issue with when entering simplified Chinese into text boxes, the text would appear as traditional Chinese.
  • Fixed some layering glitches with the scene actions menu in the manuscript page
  • Various other bug fixes
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