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What is Trove?

Trove is a desktop app for long-form writers. It opens, edits, and organises your manuscript — but the manuscript itself never leaves your machine. Every chapter is a plain Markdown file in a folder you can open with Finder, sync with iCloud Drive, version with git, or hand to another app.

That’s the only promise. Everything else follows from it.

trove · The Circus · Brotherhood - Ordinances
Trove editor with Manuscript Tree on the left and writing view in the centre

What’s in the box

Section titled “What’s in the box”

The writing:

  • Manuscript Tree — the left-hand tree of Folders and Scenes that makes up one Manuscript. Reorder with drag, nest with drop, rename in place.
  • Editor — Tiptap-based rich-text surface saving as Markdown. Headings, lists, blockquotes, images, footnotes; no proprietary block format. Plus find & replace, a local proofreader, readability, citations, split panes, and read aloud.
  • Folio — open a whole Folder as one continuous scroll. Each Scene still lives in its own file; the Folio just stitches them together for reading-through and revision.
  • Sprints — start a timed session with a word goal; finish, see the delta, log it to a Session.
  • Compile — export the Manuscript to DOCX, EPUB, PDF, Shunn manuscript format, or plain Markdown. No round-trip through a cloud service.

The planning:

  • Board — index cards, an act-grouped Outline, a Timeline, and a POV lens over the same Scenes.
  • Arcs — named through-lines with a tension curve across the book.
  • Appearances — the Scene × Entity grid: who’s on the page, where.
  • Time — an invented calendar so story-times become comparable dates, with Landmarks for world events.

The world:

  • Entities — characters, locations, factions, items, or any custom type, living in a Codex every Manuscript has. Link from any Scene with [[Name]].
  • Relationships, Family Tree, Maps — the social graph, the genealogy, the geography, all wired to the same records.
  • Tome — a user-wide notes graph (Obsidian-style backlinks) that sits beside your Manuscripts. Daily notes, wikilinks, free-form Markdown.
  • References — rename-safe [[ ]] links across everything, and a whole-library Reference Graph.

And around it: the Desk home screen, Collections and Tags, Canvas boards, full-text search behind ⌘ K, themes, rebindable shortcuts, and a Trash that keeps deletions recoverable.

Who Trove is for

Section titled “Who Trove is for”

Long-form fiction writers and worldbuilders who’ve outgrown a single Markdown file but resent the assumption that the next step is a cloud notebook. If you want your manuscript to remain something you own outright — a folder you can copy, back up, or take somewhere else, no export required — Trove is the middle ground.

Who Trove is not for

Section titled “Who Trove is not for”
  • Real-time multi-user editing of the same Scene. (Trove is single-writer per file. Circles let you share work for critique and message other writers, but each Manuscript stays yours.)
  • Cloud-only workflows. (There is no required cloud. Optional Guild sync exists — encrypted so the relay can’t read it — and file-level sync is always your call.)
  • Note-taking as the primary use case. The Tome handles freeform notes, but Trove’s centre of gravity is the Manuscript.

How files live on disk

Section titled “How files live on disk”

Pick a Trove root — usually ~/Documents/trove/ — and everything Trove writes lives under it. The layout is stable and documented:

~/Documents/trove/
  manuscripts/{slug}/
    manifest.toml             # status, word target, codex link, [time] system
    scenes/                   # the writable Manuscript Tree
      chapter-01.md
      chapter-02.md
      ...
    .snapshots/               # Drafts of Scenes
    .attachments/             # reference files bound to Scenes
    .trash/                   # soft-deleted items
  codexes/{slug}/
    manifest.toml
    entities/{type}/          # the Entities
  tome/                       # user-wide notes (graph)
  templates/                  # Scaffolds, Scene Presets, Entity Templates
  themes/                     # colour schemes as TOML

Every Manuscript’s manifest points at its Codex via codexPath = "../../codexes/<slug>" — a dedicated one Trove creates for it, or a shared one you choose. No database, no fancy linking, just relative paths.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”