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AI Assistance

Overview

AI assistance in Verkilo includes:
- Line Editing - Apply your style guide to selected sections
- AI Comments - Editorial notes on passages the AI couldn't fix directly
- Usage Tracking - Monitor API costs and token usage

Setup

API Key

  1. Open Settings (Cmd/Ctrl+,)
  2. Go to AI Assistants
  3. Enter your Claude API key
  4. Click Save

Get an API key from Anthropic's console.

Style Guide

  1. Open your book
  2. Go to Project Settings
  3. Find the Style Guide section
  4. Enter your style preferences

Example style guide:

Voice: Third person limited, past tense
Tone: Dark and atmospheric
Dialogue: Use contractions, keep realistic
Avoid: Adverbs, passive voice, filter words
Preferences: Oxford comma, em-dashes without spaces

A good style guide includes:
- Voice and tense - POV, tense, narrative distance
- Tone - Overall feel (dark, humorous, literary)
- Dialogue preferences - Contractions, dialect, tags
- Words to avoid - Adverbs, specific crutch words
- Punctuation preferences - Serial comma, dash style

Line Editing

The AI Line Editor improves your writing at the sentence level:
- Fixes awkward phrasing
- Improves word choices
- Ensures consistency with your style guide
- Shows all changes with tracked insertions and deletions

Running Line Edit

  1. Open your book in the editor
  2. Enter Verkado mode by Shift-clicking sections in the binder
  3. Select one or more sections to edit
  4. Click the AI Line Edit button in the toolbar
  5. Wait for processing (30-60 seconds depending on length)

Tip: Start with 1-3 sections to see how the AI interprets your style guide.

Reviewing Changes

The AI marks all changes inline:
- Green highlights - Inserted text
- Red strikethrough - Deleted text

Changes appear in place so you can see exactly what was modified.

Accepting or Rejecting

For each section:
- Accept All - Apply all AI changes
- Reject All - Discard changes, keep original
- Review individually - Accept or reject specific changes

Automatic Snapshots

Verkilo creates a snapshot before AI editing. You can always restore the original from Version History if needed.

Word Limits

The AI Line Editor has a 30,000-word limit per request. For longer content:
- Select fewer sections at once
- Process your book in batches

AI Comments

The AI may add editorial comments on passages that need your attention:
- Unclear phrasing it couldn't fix directly
- Potential factual questions
- Style choices requiring your input
- Plot or continuity concerns

Comments appear as yellow highlights with AI: prefix. Click to view the comment text.

See Comments for full details on viewing and managing comments.

Usage Tracking

Monitor your API usage and costs in Settings.

Viewing Usage

  1. Open Settings (Cmd/Ctrl+,)
  2. Go to AI Assistants
  3. See the Usage Statistics section

Usage Metrics

Metric Description
Total tokens Input + output tokens used
Input tokens Tokens sent to the API (your content + prompt)
Output tokens Tokens received (edited content)
Estimated cost Calculated from token usage
Edit count Number of line edit operations

Cost Calculation

Costs are calculated using Claude Opus pricing:
- Input: $15 per million tokens
- Output: $75 per million tokens

A typical section edit (2,000 words) uses approximately:
- 3,000-5,000 input tokens
- 3,000-6,000 output tokens
- Cost: ~$0.30-0.50

Usage History

View usage over time:
- By date - See daily usage
- By section - Track which sections were edited
- By book - Filter usage by book

Managing Costs

To control API costs:
- Edit fewer sections at once
- Use shorter style guides (reduces input tokens)
- Review the style guide for efficiency
- Process only sections that need polish

Best Practices

Start Small

Test on a single section first to see how the AI interprets your guide. Adjust based on results before processing more content.

Be Specific

Vague style guides produce vague results. Include:
- Specific examples of what you want
- Explicit lists of words to avoid
- Genre conventions to follow

Review Carefully

The AI doesn't know your full story context. Always review:
- Character voice consistency
- Plot-specific word choices
- Intentional style choices
- World-building terminology

Iterate Your Guide

Refine your style guide based on AI output:
- Add rules for recurring issues
- Clarify ambiguous preferences
- Include exceptions (except in dialogue)

Troubleshooting

Configure Claude API key

Add your API key in Settings > AI Assistants.

Add a style guide

Add a style guide in Project Settings. The field cannot be empty.

Content exceeds maximum word count

Select fewer sections. The limit is 30,000 words per request.

Changes seem wrong

Refine your style guide to be more specific. Include examples of what you want and don't want.

AI made a factual error

The AI doesn't know your story's facts. Reject changes that contradict your world-building or plot.

High costs

  • Process fewer sections per batch
  • Check if your style guide is unnecessarily long
  • Review usage history to identify expensive operations

Tips

  1. Mention genre conventions - Romance genre expectations helps the AI
  2. List your crutch words - Tell the AI what words you overuse
  3. Include exceptions - Avoid adverbs except in dialogue
  4. Check usage regularly - Monitor costs to avoid surprises
  5. Use AI comments - They highlight what the AI couldn't fix automatically