The Project Workspace

The project workspace is where you build everything. It's the screen you land on when you open a project, and it keeps the same shape whether your project has three files or three thousand. This guide walks through each part of it so you always know where to find things.

The rail of places

The narrow column of icons down the left edge is the rail. Each icon opens a place, and each place has its own page. The world's own pages sit at the top:

• Overview is your project's home page, the showcase visitors see.
• Files holds your folder tree and the files you open. It's where you'll spend most of your time, and it's the only place with tabs.
• Maps opens on your world's root map. See Maps and Locations.
• Game Master, the crowned die, is everything that changes how the GM runs a game: its profile, GM Instructions, tracker templates and player options. See The Game Master.

The tools for looking after the world sit at the bottom:

• Settings holds the project's settings, by section.
• Images is the bulk image editor, for generating and fixing pictures across many files at once.
• Packages lists the packages you've made and installed, and lets you browse more. See Packages.
• Trash holds files, folders and file types you've deleted, so you can restore them.

On a phone, the rail folds away. Tap the menu button at the top left to open your places.

The title bar

The bar across the top stays put whichever place you're in.

• Craft's mark at the far left takes you back out of the project. The project's name sits beside it.
• Search files and commands in the middle opens the command palette (⌘K). Jump to any file by name, go to any place, create files, or search the words inside every file. See Navigating Your Files.
• Music opens the project's soundtrack: play it, or make and add tracks.
• Share shows who can see the project and lets you change it.
• Create Version saves a versioned snapshot of the project and publishes it if your project is public. The chevron beside it opens a menu with Start Game, Share Project, Clone Project and Version History. See Publishing and Releases.

Folders, files and file types

The Files place shows your folder tree. Folders are free-form: any file type can live in any folder, and you can make as many as you like. Click a folder to open it as a page of cards, or click a file to open it.

The buttons at the top of the tree are New File and New Folder. New File lists your file types, with Manage file types at the bottom. A toggle beside them groups the tree by folder or by file type. Right-click a file or folder for the rest: rename, move, copy and Move to Trash.

Each file follows a file type: a schema that defines its fields and a layout that decides how it looks. Characters, locations, items, lore and rules are all files of different types. Use the file types that came with the system you built on, or define your own in Settings → File Types. See File Types.

Working with an open file

A file you open becomes a tab across the top of the Files place. Keep several open and click between them, or close one with its X. The buttons at the top right of a file change how you see and edit it:

• Rendered (the eye) is the default view. It shows the file's layout, the panels and sections that make a character sheet feel like a character sheet. Click a field to edit it in place.
• Edit (the pencil) shows every field in the schema as one scrolling form. Handy for filling in a lot at once.
• JSON (the braces) shows the file's underlying data, for anything the layout and form don't cover.
• Version History lists past versions of this file, with restore options.

Markdown files, like lore and notes, switch between Edit and Preview instead. A file's GM visibility button, beside it in the tree and at the top of the open file, shows whether the GM can see it: an eye when it's visible, a crossed-out eye when it's hidden. Click it to switch. See Context Visibility.

Talking to Orbit

Orbit is your world-building partner. Open it with the Orbit button at the bottom right of the workspace, or press ⌘J, and it opens in a panel on the right. Orbit can read your project, create and change files and file types, write GM Instructions, and build layouts as you go.

The buttons at the top of the panel start a new chat, open your chat history, change the panel's layout, and close it. Conversations are saved per project, so anything you discussed before is one click away. See Orbit for more.

The Game Master place

Everything about how the GM runs your games lives in the Game Master place. Its pages are listed down the left:

• The GM's name at the top opens its profile, with its Name, portrait, Voice, Recommended AI Model, and the Roll tool, which shows players a dice roller when the GM asks them to roll.
• Instructions: the rules the GM follows, always or when their moment comes, grouped into sections.
• Tracker templates: the trackers your games keep, like a clock, a chase or a faction's standing. See Trackers.
• Player options: choices players make for their game, such as story pacing or difficulty. See Player Options.
• System prompt: exactly what the GM reads every turn.
• Instruction tester: try a player's move and see which instructions would fire.

See The Game Master for each page, and Writing GM Instructions for how to write rules the GM follows.

Settings

The Settings place lists its sections down the left:

• Project: cover image, project icon, name, description, project type (world or system), Hide Hero Title, visibility, Allow Cloning and attribution.
• Discoverability is for the owner. When you publish, Craft reviews your project and picks its content rating, game type and tags for Discover. You can correct the game type and tags here.
• Prelude: an optional cinematic intro that plays once when a player starts a game. See The Prelude Editor.
• First Steps: the welcome checklist. On a system, you write the checklist that greets everyone who builds a world from it. On a world, this reopens your own checklist.
• File Types: every file type in the project. Edit one to change its schema and layout, or add a new one. See File Types.
• Appearance: the project's theme. Pick a preset or set your own colors and fonts. The theme follows your project into games.
• Pinned Files: the files new games start with pinned in the side panel, for players to open during play. Drag them into order or unpin them. A game's owner can change their own game's pins.
• Visual Novel Mode: character portraits, cutouts and expressions for the story view. See Character Expressions.
• Visual Novels: shareable stories you write from your project's characters and places, or export from a game.
• Image Generation: Style Instructions added to every image prompt in the project, so your art stays consistent.
• CDF Import/Export: export the whole workspace as a zip, or import one. See CDF Import & Export.