I spent fifteen years wanting a tool like this and not finding it. Today it exists, and you can use it.
This is the first public build of Verkilo, and it is deliberately narrow. My goal was not to impress anyone with a feature list, but to make the essential act of writing a novel feel calm and dependable, and to earn the right to build the rest.
So it does the fundamentals, and does them carefully:
- Books and sections you can organize into bundles, so a whole series lives in one project.
- A rich-text editor that stays out of the way, in light or dark, with an accent color you choose.
- Character and location tracking, with point-of-view recorded per section.
- Verkado mode, for editing several sections side by side.
- Export to EPUB, DOCX, PDF, HTML, and Markdown.
That last point matters most to me. Your manuscript is yours. It lives on your computer, in a format you control, and it leaves whenever you ask it to.
This is a starting line, not a finish. Much of what I want Verkilo to be is still ahead. But the foundation is here, it is honest, and it is ready for real work.
Thank you for trying it. I am building this in the open, and I would rather hear what is wrong than what is polite.