Your First Chapter
A step-by-step quickstart from opening Alcove to locking your first chapter and seeing what comes next — nothing is permanent until you lock.
Welcome. This walkthrough takes you from a blank library to your first locked chapter. You never start from an empty page, and nothing becomes part of your story until you decide it does.
The app proposes; the writer steers.
1. Pick or import a cartridge
Your library opens to a shelf of Cartridges — ready-made story worlds and engines. Tap one to see what it carries: its tone, pacing, the kinds of things it tracks, and the rewards it can reveal. Pick a featured cartridge, choose an original genre, or import your own universe. The cartridge brings the configuration so you don't have to. See Cartridges.
2. Create a save file
A Save File is your private timeline in that world. Give it a name, pick a pace — a focused arc, a full season, a slow burn, or open-ended — and you're in. Your save is yours alone — its content is never shown on public cartridge pages.
Share the cartridge. Everyone writes their own save file.
3. Get three next moves
Instead of a blank prompt, the Auto Route offers three recommended next moves drawn from where your story stands. Each card pitches a direction with its tone, the cast involved, and what's at stake. Pick the one that pulls at you, or ask for more options. More on this in the core loop.
4. Approve or tweak the scene brief
Before any chapter is written, you see a Scene Brief — purpose, characters, location, conflict, the feeling you're after, and any boundaries you want held. Every field is editable. Adjust it until it's right, then continue.
5. Generate or draft
Hand it to the Writers Room to generate the scene, or write it yourself. As prose appears you can steer it live — rewrite a passage, shift the tone, expand a beat, or give a direct instruction. Generating is fast, cheap, and fully reversible; one pull writes one chapter.
6. Review the proposed state updates
When the draft is ready, Alcove shows the State Updates it proposes: relationship shifts, secrets revealed, new codex entries, route progress. These are only suggestions — accept, edit, or drop each one.
Generated drafts never change your world on their own. They produce proposals; your approval is the gate.
7. Canon Lock
When you're happy, Canon Lock. This is the deliberate moment that makes the chapter real and applies your approved changes.
Draft is not canon until you lock it.
Everything before this is safe to undo, rewrite, or abandon. Read more at Canon Lock.
8. Reward, then continue
Locking reveals a Reward earned from the canon you just made, and your Cast Board, Story Codex, and route all catch up. The Auto Route offers your next three moves, and the loop begins again.
Your story remembers itself.
Where to go next
- Understand the full cycle: the core loop.
- The building blocks: Cartridges and Save Files.
- Writing and directing: the Writers Room.
- How the world stays consistent: Canon Lock.
- Costs and plans: Credits & plans.
What is Alcove?
A mobile-first AI story console for branching serialized fiction — pick a cartridge, create a save file, and write a living novel that remembers itself.
The core loop
The repeating cycle at the heart of Alcove — Next Move, Scene Brief, Generate, State Update, Canon Lock, Reward, Continue.