DeepQuill
Write the whole novel
in one room —
first sentence to final draft.
Focus on the book, not the bookkeeping. DeepQuill is a complete writing environment for the long book: a calm editor at the centre, a codex that remembers every character, structure you can see, and revision you can trust. Local by default. Sync when you choose.
beats & structure
a calm editor
a living codex
tension & relationships
snapshots & search
Your novel is scattered across
six open windows.
Somewhere between chapter four and chapter forty, the book stops fitting in your head. The editor holds the prose; a spreadsheet holds the timeline; a wiki holds the characters; sticky notes hold the rest. You spend your good hours reconciling tools instead of writing.
- BeforeEditor + notes + spreadsheets + a character wiki, none of them aware of each other.
- The costA detail drifts in chapter nine, surfaces wrong in chapter thirty, and no tool notices.
- DeepQuillOne room: drafting, the codex, structure, and history — all reading the same manuscript.
Write it, track it, shape it, revise it.
One environment for every stage of the book — not six apps you keep in sync by hand.
The Editor The heart
Where the hours go.
A calm, focused writing surface built for long manuscripts: rich formatting, distraction-free mode, and spell- & grammar-checking that already knows your character names. Hover any name to see who they are.
- Distraction-free, focused writing
- Rich formatting, chapters & scenes
- Spell-check + grammar that knows your characters
- In-editor codex hover cards
- Read several scenes as one (aggregate view)
Living Codex
Never lose a detail again.
DeepQuill reads your manuscript and builds a codex of characters, locations, and arcs by itself — traits, relationships, voice — so the book's facts stay straight across forty chapters.
- Automatic character & location extraction
- In-editor hover cards
- Relationship & voice detection
- Spell-check that knows your character names
Story Structure New · Flagship
See the whole book at a glance.
Lay your manuscript out as story beats on one board — pick a template like “The 10 Key Scenes,” drag scenes into the beats they belong to, and watch the tension contour rise and fall across the arc. A Story Insights panel surfaces the problems you can't see from inside a single chapter, and the Codex rail keeps every character one glance away.
- Whole-book structure on one board — three-act, Save-the-Cat, or your own template
- A scene-by-scene tension contour drawn across the story
- Story Insights: “a character vanishes for a long stretch,” “beats with no scenes yet”
- Colour the board by arc, tension, or POV — with the Codex always in reach
Story Diagrams New
A sketchbook for plot.
A free-form board to map plot threads, timelines, and half-formed ideas. Connect anything to anything. It lives beside your manuscript — not in another app you have to keep in sync by hand.
- Free-form sketch canvas
- Connect threads, scenes, and notes
- Lives next to your draft
- Syncs across devices like everything else
Fearless revision
Experiment without fear.
Git-style snapshots capture your manuscript at any moment. See exactly what changed — “847 words changed since your last snapshot” — roll back instantly, and find anything with semantic search, even when you can't remember the exact words.
- Versioned snapshots with instant rollback
- Real word-level diffs
- Semantic search across the whole manuscript
- Per-scene to-do tracking
The rest of the room
Powerful search and replace across the whole manuscript — scoped, case-aware, and fast.
See who interacts with whom — classified as dialog, conflict, or cooperation.
Analysis runs on your machine by default; slide toward remote (OpenRouter) for more power. Non-generative, always.
Write at noon or 2 a.m. The room follows you.
Per-scene metadata, POV detection, and structured beats.
Download, open, write. Sync and remote AI are opt-in, never required.
Local by default. Remote when you ask for it. Always yours.
DeepQuill starts fully on your machine — no account, no upload, nothing leaves. Then you decide, project by project, how far to open the door. The defaults protect you; the choices belong to you.
Local by default
Open the app and write. Your manuscript, codex, snapshots, and analysis all live on disk — no account, no sign-in, no upload.
Sync when you want
Turn on sync for a single project to work across your laptop and desktop — your data moving between your devices, end-to-end. Optionally connect Google Drive or Google Docs to import and sync the manuscript files you choose.
Power when you need it
All analysis is non-generative and runs locally. Slide toward remote (OpenRouter) for heavier work — opt-in, per use. It reads; it never writes for you.
Privacy isn't a marketing line here. It's the default state of the application.
Built for some writers,
and not for others.
We'd rather tell you now than waste your download.
A good fit if you…
- ✓Write long-form fiction — 20k words and climbing.
- ✓Revise hard, and care about internal consistency.
- ✓Lose the thread of structure across a big book.
- ✓Like to shape your tools, not be shaped by them.
- ✓Want your work on your machine, with sync as a choice.
Not a fit if you…
- ✕Want AI to write or generate prose for you.
- ✕Are looking for a ChatGPT replacement.
- ✕Need a collaborative, multi-author web suite.
- ✕Write mostly short pieces and don't revise much.
- ✕Want prompts and autocomplete doing the drafting.
Built by a novelist and an engineer tired of juggling six apps to write one book. The goal isn't productivity hacks — it's mental clarity while writing: a single room where the whole novel is visible, and the work that isn't writing gets out of your way.
Three channels, your pace.
Pick stability, or live a little closer to the edge.
Stable releases, fully tested. The right choice for daily writing.
No account required. Just download and start writing.
macOS 11+ · Windows 10+ · Automatic updates included.
How DeepQuill compares
A private, local-first novelist's studio — next to the tools writers already know.
| Feature | DeepQuill | Scrivener | NovelCrafter | Dabble | Ulysses | Word | Google Docs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local-first / works fully offline | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| Novel-focused long-form editor | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Story bible / character & world tracking | ✓ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Automatic entity & relationship detection | ✓ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| On-device / private AI (no cloud) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ |
| Version history / snapshots | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ✓ | ✓ |
| End-to-end encrypted sync | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Import from other writing apps | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
✓ full ~ partial / limited ✗ none
Write your next book in a room built for it.
We onboard a small group at a time, so we can actually listen. Tell us what you're working on, and we'll be in touch.
What DeepQuill is, and how it uses Google access
DeepQuill is a private desktop writing app for novelists. You draft your manuscript in a focused editor while DeepQuill's on-device AI reads your work to help you keep a long book consistent — building a story bible of your characters, locations, and plot points, mapping how they connect, and showing your structure and pacing. It analyses your writing; it never writes for you.
DeepQuill runs entirely on your own machine and never requires a Google account. If you choose to connect one, DeepQuill uses that access only to import, read, or sync the writing-related files you select from Google Drive or Google Docs.
- DeepQuill does not use Google user data for advertising.
- DeepQuill does not sell Google user data.
- DeepQuill does not transfer Google user data except as needed to provide the app's writing and manuscript features.
DeepQuill's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. You can use DeepQuill without connecting Google; Google access is required only if you want to work with files stored in Google Drive or Google Docs. See our Privacy Policy for full details.