EthanYoQ/AI-Novel-Writer

AI Novel Writer – Overview

AI Novel Writer (中文名 AI 小说作家) is a desktop‑application that helps writers produce long‑form fiction with the assistance of large‑language‑model generators. It does not host a model itself; instead it lets you point the program at any OpenAI‑compatible endpoint (OpenAI, DeepSeek, Ollama, NovelAI, etc.) or a Google Gemini endpoint, and it orchestrates prompts, context, and revision cycles locally.

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What the tool does

Feature	What it means for you
Structured workflow	The app guides you through a linear pipeline – premise → characters & world‑building → outline → chapter blueprints → draft → review → revision → final manuscript. All artefacts are saved in a project folder you control.
Chapter‑level generation	When you ask the model to write a chapter, the program builds a context that includes the current chapter’s blueprint, relevant character cards, world‑info and any reference material, instead of feeding the whole novel at once.
Failure recovery	If a generation call fails, any partially‑generated text is stored as a recovery candidate in a local SQLite DB. It can be inspected or discarded without corrupting the official draft.
Automated review & revision	After a draft is produced, the app can ask the model to produce a structured review report. That report can then be fed back into a “revise” step, keeping the author in the loop.
Role/World management	Dedicated panels let you create, edit and link character cards, world‑building notes, and keep them synchronized with the outline.
Batch chapter tasks	You can launch a job that writes several consecutive chapters (1‑10) and pause or cancel it at any time.
Multi‑language UI	The interface is available in Chinese and English; the language choice is persisted across sessions.
Plug‑in for DeepSeek Harness	A very limited web‑based plug‑in (@ethanyoq/dsh-ai-novel-writer) exists for the DeepSeek Harness platform, but it only implements a minimal “proposal‑review‑apply” loop and is frozen at 0.1.0.

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How it works under the hood

• Model adapters – The app supports two families of APIs:
  • OpenAI‑compatible (OpenAI, DeepSeek, Ollama, NovelAI, Azure, etc.)
  • Google Gemini native protocol You configure the base URL, model name and API key in a local JSON file (~/.vela/models.json).
• Local storage – Projects, drafts, character sheets and the SQLite database (.vela folder) live entirely on your computer. No data is sent to the developer’s servers.
• Prompt templates ("Skills") – For each stage (planning, drafting, reviewing, polishing) you can attach a custom prompt template that the model will use. This lets you enforce a particular style or structure.
• Full‑text search – Imported reference texts are indexed with SQLite FTS, so you can quickly retrieve passages even without a vector‑store embedding.

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Who might benefit?

• Novelists who want AI assistance but refuse cloud‑only SaaS platforms.
• Writers working with private or proprietary data – because everything stays on‑device.
• Teams that need reproducible project trees – the app records every step, making it easy to back‑up or hand‑off a manuscript.

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Getting started (quick checklist)

1. Download the appropriate installer from the GitHub Releases page (Windows .exe or macOS .dmg).
2. Install – the installer updates the app but leaves your existing project folders untouched.
3. Configure a model – open the settings, choose OpenAI‑compatible or Gemini, fill in the endpoint URL, model name and API key.
4. Create a new project – define premise, characters, world‑building, then generate an outline.
5. Generate chapters – run the “chapter blueprint → draft” step; review the AI‑generated draft, optionally run the automated review, and iterate until satisfied.

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Limitations to keep in mind

• The app does not provide any model hosting; you must have a local inference server (e.g., Ollama) or an active cloud API key.
• The DeepSeek Harness plug‑in is a preview and only offers ~10 % of the desktop version’s capabilities.
• No built‑in publishing platform – you export the final manuscript yourself.
• Windows installers are unsigned, and macOS builds are only ad‑hoc signed, so you may need to bypass OS warnings.

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License & Community

• The desktop application is released under GPL‑3.0.
• The DeepSeek Harness plug‑in is MIT‑licensed and published on npm as @ethanyoq/dsh-ai-novel-writer.
• Issues, feature requests and release announcements are handled through the GitHub repository.

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In short: AI Novel Writer is a genuine, locally‑run AI‑assisted novel‑writing workstation that stitches together prompt management, chapter‑level generation, review loops and project‑level organization, while keeping all data under the author’s control.