FlowBoard Manual

PlotzyDraft FlowBoard is a keyboard-first workspace for planning, drafting and structuring writing and other complex material. You arrange ideas as cards in columns on boards, and read them back as continuous text when you want to see how they flow. FlowBoard can also turn cards into interactive, branching stories and visual novels, which you play in the app and export to Ren’Py or Ink. The initial public release is for macOS. The PlotzyDraft:FlowBoard license covers up to three devices; Windows is planned but not publicly available, with no announced release date. This manual also documents Apple mobile builds, which are outside that offer.

Each document is a single plain Markdown file, so your work stays readable in any text editor and remains yours.

How FlowBoard organizes your work

• A document is one .md file.
• A document holds boards, for example one per chapter, act or subject.
• A board holds columns, and columns hold cards written in Markdown.

You work with them in Board View, which shows one board as columns of cards. You can also open Story Map, a canvas that shows the same cards spatially, with story scenes and their connections.

Documents, boards, columns and cards explains the model in detail, and Board View and Story Map the two views.

Start here

If you’re new to FlowBoard, read these first:

1. Your first document: create a document and learn the everyday moves.
2. The FlowBoard window: find your way around, and learn how to find any command.
3. How FlowBoard saves your work: autosave, undo and backups.

Find what you need

• Boards and cards covers organizing your material: cards, tags and dates, and filtering.
• Reading and writing covers Read View, Zen Mode and the outline, which takes you to any heading.
• Interactive stories covers building branching stories and visual novels in Story Map, testing them in Play Mode, exporting them to Ren’Py and Ink, and translating them.
• Import and export covers getting content in and out, including PDF and Word.
• AI Assist covers letting a language model draft, rewrite and reorganize cards for your review: how it works, what a request sends, and setting up a connection. It’s not available on iPad and iPhone.
• Reference lists every keyboard shortcut and describes the file format and the story markup.

If something isn’t working as expected, the support hub is the place to go.