Codex

A Codex holds Entities and only Entities. No manuscripts, no scenes. Just a structured library of the people, places, factions, items, and lore your stories share.

Every Manuscript has a Codex. Create a Manuscript and Trove provisions a dedicated Codex alongside it; link a shared Codex instead and several books draw on the same cast. The split exists because most writers reuse a setting — the same characters, the same map, the same gods, across many books. You don’t want to maintain five copies of the cast.

What a Codex holds

On disk:

codexes/{slug}/
  manifest.toml
  entities/
    character/
      tomas.md
      ariane.md
    location/
      bridgepoint.md
      the-old-mill.md
    faction/
      ...

A Codex is pointed at by Manuscripts via the codexPath field in the Manuscript manifest. Many Manuscripts can link to the same Codex.

Dedicated or shared

• Dedicated — the default. Each new Manuscript gets its own Codex, named after it. Fine for standalone books; you never have to think about it.
• Shared — link an existing Codex when you create the Manuscript (or later, by changing codexPath). A trilogy is three Manuscripts pointing at one Codex.

Moving from dedicated to shared is file moves, not migration — Entities are plain files, so you can consolidate two Codexes by moving the entities/ folders together and updating codexPath.

Browsing the Codex

The Codex is also the in-app view onto your Entities. Open it from the sidebar, or browse the linked Codex from inside a Manuscript without leaving the editor.

trove · Codex

• Browse Entities by Type (characters, locations, factions, …).
• Search by name across the Codex.
• Filter by Type, tag, or custom field.
• Jump straight into an Entity to edit it.

It’s read-and-edit — changes you make here are the same edits you’d make opening the Entity file directly. There is no separate database.

Beyond the list

The Codex is more than a filing cabinet:

• Relationships and the Family Tree — typed links between Entities, drawn as a graph.
• Maps — image maps with pinned Entities.
• References — every [[ ]] mention of an Entity across your Scenes and notes.

A note on terminology

• Codex is the structured library of Entities. The setting is the broader fiction the Codex models.
• See the ubiquitous language glossary for the full vocabulary.