The room where your
book gets written

Books, chapters and sections. Comments, notes and tracked changes. Your words in files you own. No cloud, no account, nothing watching you type.

Actively in beta, free. Version 0.1.1, SHA-256 checksums, works fully offline
The Quillard toolbar, the real one

The point at dusk

Mara VanceDo we ever learn who turned it off? Might be worth planting a clue here.
↑ live: this is the editor, typing. Not a video.
The app

Everything a manuscript needs.
Nothing a manuscript doesn’t.

Quillard was built for people who write for a living, and for the editors who work with them. Every form is a first-class citizen here:

NovelsChapters, parts, prologues. Word counts that keep you honest.
Short stories & collectionsMany pieces, one book, one file.
PoetryThe line breaks stay exactly where you put them.
ScreenplaysTab cycles the elements; the page reads like the industry expects.
Essays & reportsStructure for arguments, quotes and findings.
Articles & blog postsHeadlines, deadlines, links, clean Markdown out.

And here is what a day in it actually looks like.

The library, a tour book open
The library

A library, not a pile of files

Every piece of writing is a book, a novel, a short story, an essay, a report, a screenplay, a blog post, with chapters and sections inside. You always know where you are, and how much of it there is.

  • Word counts everywhere, per section, chapter and book, with a daily goal if you want one
  • Jump anywhere with ⌘P, book, chapter, section or scene
  • Research board, clippings, notes and sticky cards pinned beside the manuscript
  • Snapshots, the app quietly keeps history, so “the version from Tuesday” exists
Tracked changes and margin comments in Saltwater
Editing together

Edit like a newsroom, feel like a margin

Flip on Suggesting and every edit is marked with its author, insertions, deletions, the lot, ready to be accepted or rejected one by one or all at once.

  • Comments with replies live beside the text, anchored to the words they’re about
  • Proofreading underlines as you type, quiet, local, and easy to silence per passage
  • Personal autocorrect rules, names and house spellings that always come out your way
  • Case tools, tidy-spaces, find across every book, the small things, done properly
The sync sheet, every book and its state
Sync

Two computers. One book. Zero cloud.

A book saves as a .quill file, a real file you can see, copy and back up. Put it in any folder two machines share and they stay in step.

  • Review before it lands, incoming changes are shown, not silently applied
  • Works with anything, Dropbox, Syncthing, a NAS, a USB stick if that’s your style
  • Pause any time, one click and nothing leaves the machine until you say so
  • End-to-end encrypted over the internet: syncing through the relay seals every book and chat message with AES-256-GCM, with a key only your paired machines hold. The relay stores ciphertext it cannot read
  • A little bell when a book syncs, if you like your machines to be polite
A blog post with its headline counter
For the press

Deadlines, headlines and links

Reports and blog posts get their own toolkit, the pieces of newsroom software worth keeping, without the newsroom.

  • Headline counter that warns as your title outgrows the wire
  • Deadline beacons, a date per piece, a pace to hit, and a light that blinks orange, then red
  • Inline links with ⌘K, followed with a ⌘-click
  • Copy as Markdown or HTML, a finished section pasted straight into your CMS
The craft

Fast under the hands.
Careful over the words.

Everything a working writer reaches for a hundred times a day sits on a key, and a quiet set of checkers reads over your shoulder without ever grabbing the wheel.

  • Spellcheck in English and Spanish, switchable any time, with right-click suggestions that go through the editor like any other edit
  • A quiet proofreader: grammar slips and commonly confused words, underlined as you type, easy to silence per passage
  • The echo checker: a distinctive word or phrase coming round again too soon gets a gentle flag, along with repeated openings and marathon sentences
  • Personal autocorrect: names and house spellings that always come out your way, and one undo straight after keeps what you typed
  • Tidy stray spaces, UPPERCASE and lowercase tools, find across every book at once
⌘⌥⌫Delete the whole previous sentence, mid-thought, without touching the mouse.
⇧⌫Take back the last word in one stroke.
⌘⏎Start a fresh paragraph from anywhere in the line, even mid-sentence.
⌘PJump to any book, chapter, section or scene by typing a few letters of its name.
⌘FFind in the section, the whole book, or every book you own at once.
⌘⇧FEverything but the page falls away; Esc brings the room back.
TabOn a screenplay, cycle scene, action, character and dialogue without a menu.
and dozens more, ⌘/ shows the whole card

And the rest of the room

ChatTalk it over, beside the page.

Paired machines carry a writers’ chat: pin a line, ask a question, answer from the other desk.

DictationSpeak. It types.

The speech engine lives on your machine, offline. Nothing you say goes anywhere.

CommentsComments & replies

anchored to the exact words they’re about

Research📌 The research board

Clippings, notes and sticky cards pinned beside the manuscript, out of the text’s way.

OutlineThe whole book at arm’s length.

Chapters, sections and word counts in one sweep.

Deadlines A light that will not nag

Set a date per piece. It blinks orange as time thins, red when it’s gone. That’s all it does.

Notifications🔔 A quiet word

When the other machine saves, when a book arrives, when the bell is worth ringing. Never more.

Distraction-free, with your voiceThe room goes quiet. Keep talking.

Focus and Zen strip everything but the page, and dictation keeps typing while you pace.

Themes
Nine rooms, each with its own sound.
Exports🧾 Word, EPUB, PDF, Markdown

Your manuscript leaves the way editors expect it.

En español🌍 Both languages, whole app

English and Spanish, switchable any time, spellcheck included.

Yours🪪 Licensed to you, by name

Even the free beta. Works forever, offline.

“The carriage follows your cursor. The bell rings when the book syncs. It is completely unnecessary and I will never write anywhere else.”what we hope you’ll say
Nine rooms to write in

Change the room, keep the words.

A theme in Quillard isn’t a colour swap, it’s a whole room. A wood desk with a black steel typewriter whose carriage follows your cursor. A CP/M screen from 1985. Green phosphor burning in a dark study. Every room has its own sound, if you want it.

LightPaper, ink, and quiet.
DarkA late desk lamp, warm amber accents.
Typist, AntiqueBlack steel on a real wood desk. The carriage tracks your caret.
Typist, NoirGloss black like an old car, manila paper, red ribbon.
WordStarCP/M blue, 1985. Mechanical key taps included.
Kaypro, Phosphor & MatrixGreen glow on black glass, two ways.
All nine rooms, toured properly →
From the desk

Updates and release notes

Short, honest notes whenever something ships. The two most recent below.

AUGUST 2026

Onboarding, crash reports, and a licence with your name on itnews

First launch now greets you properly: pick a room, sign your name, and the beta licence is yours. A “Start Here” book teaches the app from inside a real manuscript.

AUGUST 2026

Quillard 0.1.1release

The installer went on a diet, Windows ships a proper installer, checksums are published with every build, and updates check quietly once a day.

All updates & release notes →
01No accountOpen the app, write. That’s the whole sign-up.
02Nothing phones homeYour licence carries your name, on your disk, not on a server. The app has no telemetry at all.
03No cloudSync happens through folders you control, sealed end to end over the internet.
04No subscriptionBeta is free; 1.0 is a one-time price. Keys work offline, forever.
Questions

Fair questions, straight answers.

Is it really free?

During beta, yes, fully. Every copy is licensed to its writer by name. When 1.0 arrives it becomes a one-time purchase, and beta writers get a discount; the pricing page has the whole promise. Nothing you write is ever held hostage: your files stay yours and stay readable, licensed or not.

macOS says the app “is damaged”. It isn’t.

That’s macOS being cautious about beta apps that aren’t yet notarized. Open Terminal and runxattr -cr /Applications/Quillard.app once, then it opens normally. Signed and notarized builds are coming before launch.

Windows shows a SmartScreen warning.

Same story: new beta, unsigned installer. Click “More info → Run anyway”, and check the SHA-256 against the published checksums if you like to be sure. Signed installers arrive with 1.0.

If every copy is licensed to me by name… don’t you know who I am?

No, and that’s the point. You type your name into the app and it’s written to a file on your own disk. That’s the whole ceremony: nothing is registered, sent or counted. We couldn’t email you if we wanted to, because there is no email. At 1.0, buying a key will be the first time you tell us anything at all.

Where do my words actually live?

In a .quill file on your disk, plus your library in the app’s data folder. Both are plain files you can copy, back up and version like anything else you own.

What are you building next?

The working list, roughly in order: an outliner and corkboard, research import (web pages and PDFs), citations that appear as you type, a compile system for long manuscripts, and templates. The Updates page is where each one lands.