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Show HN: Chronicle – Local-first, open-source authoring software for writers (pazvanti.github.io)

1 points by pazvanti ↗ HN
About a year and a half ago I started my writing journey by beginning to work on my first novella. During this time, I felt the need for different tools, like a timeline editor, a character sheet and so on, features that were not available on normal text editors. Later I discovered that I needed an Epub exporter, cover designer and more. I also wanted something AI-free, something private. It is important for me as a debut author to know that it is my writing, not an AI's and that it wont be used for AI training. So most cloud services were an instant "NO" from me.

Being a software engineer by day, I decided that instead of paying hundreds of dollars for the needed tools, I could just make them the way I wanted them to be. Eventually I decided to bundle them together, polish them and add more feature. So, this is how Chronicle was born.

Chronicle is a complete writing and authoring tool for writers. It offers features that other companies charge tens or even hundreds of dollars, while delivering (in my opinion) and inferior experience.

I also wanted Chronicle to work fully offline, not use Gen AI in the writing process, and provide a privacy-first experience.

Among the features are: - full-featured text editor with comments supports - timeline editor - character sheet - locations codex - Epub reader and exporter (including editing Epub Metadata) - Cover designer - Fully-local TTS using KokoroJS Text-to-Speech for help in proofreading - Themes - Private Cloud-storage support with WebDAV - and many more

And I made Chronicle not only free, but fully open-source. You can check the source code on Github, launch the online editor which supports almost all features, or download the app for both Windows and MacOS.

I would love to hear feedback.

Disclaimer: In the development process I did use AI. The app is NOT made entirely by AI, but being a back-end developer mostly, I did use AI for parts related to the user interface, themes, fix some bugs and to bridge knowledge gaps I had.

7 comments

[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 17.6 ms ] thread
sixtyj
Nicely done.

Online editor seems not loading in mobile Safari browser.

Imho “vector PDF” is going to be confusing for focus group. Just “PDF” is fine.

anatolykhelmer
Looks really nice! I'm not a writer by myself, but nowadays everyone is somehow using agent to help writing. Are you planning to add some kind of it to the tool?
pazvanti
No. I believe that writing should be done by humans. Same for art (well, writing is art, but you get the drift). I did use Kokoro which technically is GenAI, but because proofreading is an important part of the writing process. It helped me a lot to detect dialogues that don't flow naturally, or sentences that sounded awkward.

Also, one reason why I made this was because I did not want to have GenAI in my writing. And Google Docs or other such services push LLMs so much. Wanted something private.

8by3
Why do all vibe coded sites use a dark theme with blue and purple glowing styling. Is this the colour scheme of the future, the bots have decided?

Or is it something boring like its the default colours of some npm pkg.