Features
Every major feature, in detail.
sgeulai /SHKAY-lee/ — Scottish Gaelic for storyteller.
Sgeulai is still in development. Where there's a screenshot, it's the real thing; where there isn't yet, the frame names the exact screen it's waiting on.
The environment
The window is divided the way the work is.
Binder on the left holds your manuscripts, broken into parts, chapters and scenes, with the Story Bible beneath them. The editor sits in the middle with whatever you selected. The inspector on the right explains it — every analysis tool describes itself there in three parts: what it is, how to read it, and what to do about what it says. Everything below happens inside this one window.
The binder (parts, chapters, scenes and the Story Bible's characters, locations, events and more) on the left; a chapter of the manuscript in the editor; and the inspector on the right, here open to the Readability tool — reading ease, word and sentence length, syllable and paragraph density, all drawn from the text itself.
Write
01 — Writing aids
Help while you write, tracked once it's used.
Writing Tools, Antidote and Harper sit in the editor alongside inline comments. When an AI edit touches a passage, it's marked in the margin — so a page that had help still shows, at a glance, exactly where.
The edited passage stays highlighted in the text, with the comment that explains it alongside — and the footer's “AI edited 1 passage” indicator, so it's never a guess which sentences had help.
02 — Wikilinks and backlinks
Link as you write. See where it's used, from either end.
Mention a character or place in the manuscript and Sgeulai offers to link it — no separate step, no breaking your sentence to go find the record. Every record's Notes tab shows its backlinks in return: everywhere it's mentioned, in prose, notes and comments alike.
Hover a link for its preview, or check the inspector's list on the right — every character, place and object linked in this chapter, in one place.
Remember
01 — Story Bible
Everything you know about the book, beside the book.
Characters, places and threads live as records beside the manuscript, not in a separate app or a stack of notecards. Four views — Full, Compact, Necessities and one more — show as much or as little of a record as the moment calls for, and coloured marks beside a blank field show what's still missing.
A character record in Full view — identity, background and classification, with a completeness rating in the inspector so you can see what's still missing at a glance.
02 — History
A real-world timeline beneath the story.
Import a spreadsheet of dated events, or add them by hand, and lay the real world's timeline beside your scenes and chapters. It shows up right where you're writing — so a story set across decades stays straight without a separate chart to maintain.
The footer's History band, spanning decades at a glance — the marker shows exactly when the passage you're writing takes place.
Return
01 — Analysis tools
Sixteen ways to read what you actually wrote.
Pacing, repetition, dialogue balance and more — every view drawn from the manuscript itself, not a guess about it. Each one opens in the editor pane with its explanation waiting in the inspector beside it.
The Pacing tool: chapter and scene length charted against this book's own usual range, with every outlier chapter named below it — the inspector explains what to do about each one.
02 — AI that reads, not writes for you
It reads the manuscript. You decide what's kept.
Point Sgeulai's AI reading tools at a chapter and it proposes Story Bible entries drawn from what's actually on the page. Nothing is written down without your approval — every proposal waits for an accept or reject before it becomes part of the record.
Every proposed reading waits here, unticked, until you accept or discard it — nothing joins the Story Bible until you say so.
03 — Import and export
Brings what you already have. Leaves how you need it.
Import from Scrivener, Plottr or an EPUB and the structure comes across with the text. Export to DOCX, PDF, or a clean Shunn-standard manuscript that carries no branding at all — the way a submission is supposed to look.
Screenshot needed
The manuscript's import/export menu open, showing the Scrivener, Plottr and EPUB commands.
More detail than fits on a page.
The help documentation covers every one of these in full — including the eight or so smaller tools that didn't make this list.