Getting Started

Radial Timeline transforms your manuscript into a live visual map of your story. It works with any Obsidian vault — fresh or existing — by reading and writing scene metadata as note properties (YAML frontmatter) at the top of each note.

01Setup02Daily Workflow

You get two workspaces: the Radial Timeline View for scenes, structure, and chronology, and the Inquiry View for corpus-level analysis. Inquiry, along with Pulse, Gossamer AI analysis, and Summary scene refresh, requires AI to be turned on first — see the optional step below.

Live mockup

Welcome

Radial Timeline turns long-form narratives into a single, navigable story map. Track scenes, subplots, characters, beats, and timelines across novels, sagas, memoirs, and other sustained fiction or nonfiction projects. Pick a starting point below.

Take a moment to share your feedback about Radial Timeline and the features you would like to see next to smooth your writing workflow. Radial Timeline is expanding in every direction, and your feedback helps guide it. Community feedback requires sign-in. Without a Community account, use our contact form. Happy Writing!

Explore a finished bookAdd a complete Story Vault to this vault. Explore the scenes, beats, Pulse, Gossamer, and saved Inquiry briefings. No API key needed.Choose a story

Set Book ProjectChoose the manuscript folder that drives the timeline, exports, Inquiry scope, and Book Manager.→ or open Book DesignerOpen Book Manager

Import a manuscriptBring in a Scrivener export or a Word document. Scenes, order, synopses and metadata come with it.Import manuscript

Visit the websiteJoin the community and share your journey at your own comfort level. Learn about the features available using the Radial Timeline & Editorialist ecosystem and get help.Open Website

Starting a new vault?

Set your novel folder inside the vault with Book Manager.

Open the Command Palette ⌘ + P and run Note create, or scaffold quickly with Book Designer.

Populate scenes and then expand with subplots, beat systems and more.

Decide early: How many acts? What is the span of time? Consider helpful context markers with backdrop notes or micro-backdrops.

Once you get in the rhythm, don’t forget to track your writing session time and word count and set due dates for scenes or publish stages.

The Community is live — connect from Radial Timeline plugin settings → Community and share your writing journey.

YouTube videosCommunityWiki — full documentationBug reports / feature requests

Back up your Obsidian vault regularly to protect against data loss. Learn more at Obsidian backup guide. Sync does not protect against all forms of data loss. Obsidian’s File recovery keeps snapshots of your notes, and Obsidian Sync or iCloud keeps a copy on your other devices.

Welcome screen. Quick-start guide for new vaults. Hover a card.

The Welcome screen offers these starting points:

1. Explore a finished book — add a free, fully analyzed Story Vault such as Pride & Prejudice or The Odyssey to this vault with Choose a story. No API key needed to explore it.
2. Set Book Project — choose the manuscript folder that drives the timeline, exports, Inquiry scope, and Book Manager. Use this when starting scene notes yourself, or follow → or open Book Designer to plan the book first.
3. Import a manuscript — bring an existing draft in from a Scrivener export, a Word document, or one big file, with Structure only — no AI as the default.
4. Visit the website — radialtimeline.com for support docs and the Community, where you can share your writing journey at your own comfort level.

A new book opens on an empty timeline that says Your timeline is ready. Open Timetable leads to Outline, where you add an outline document to begin.

Tip

Coming from Scrivener, Word, or another tool? Import a manuscript lets you select an export directly and review scene notes before writing them. A supplied Scrivener outline CSV determines import order; without one, numbered filenames determine it. You map exported metadata once during import. See Scene Properties (Core + Advanced) for the full schema.

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Setup

Choose a vault layout and stick with it: a single-book vault, a single vault with a dedicated Manuscript folder, or a multi-book vault with one folder per book.

1. Install and add a book profile. Install Radial Timeline from Community Plugins, open Settings → Core → Books, add a profile, and link its Source folder to your manuscript folder.

2. Bring in scenes.

• Fresh vault: run Radial timeline: Book designer to generate a scaffold (acts, subplots, optional beats), or run Radial timeline: Note create → Scene → Core scene to start with a single scene.
• Existing vault: your scene notes should use Class: Scene. The main scene properties are Act, Synopsis, and Subplot. Chronologue uses When and Duration; Progress uses Status and Publish Stage. If your vault uses different property names, enable Remap frontmatter field keys under Settings → Advanced → Configuration.

3. Choose a beat system (optional). Pick from the built-in systems (Save the Cat, Hero’s Journey, Classic Dramatic Structure, plus podcast, video, documentary, romance, and thriller arcs) or build a Custom system in Settings → Core → Story beats system. Use Create beat notes to generate beat notes, and Repair beat notes to realign existing ones after changes.

4. Enable AI (optional). New installs ship with AI off. Turn it on under Settings → AI → Enable AI LLM features — this is required to run new Inquiry questions, AI Pulse Triplet Analysis, Gossamer AI analysis, and Summary scene refresh. Inquiry itself opens with AI off, so you can read saved sessions without an API key. Configure a cloud provider key or a Local LLM, then check model readiness before running analysis.

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Daily Workflow

The four modes in the Radial Timeline View — switch with 1/2/3/4 or the navigation cluster:

• Progress (1) — writing status and revision-stage tracking
• Narrative (2) — manuscript order; drag scenes on the outer ring to reorder
• Chronologue (3) — story-world time, duration, and gaps
• Gossamer (4) — beat-level scoring across Momentum, Tension, Activity, Interiority

Day to day: write scenes, keep Synopsis current, update Status from Todo → Working → Complete. Use Timeline search to find scenes across metadata. See How to for task recipes (reordering, subplots, search).

When you’re ready to share: run Radial timeline: Manuscript export to compile to Markdown, an outline, Word (DOCX), or PDF. Word requires Pandoc; PDF requires Pandoc and a LaTeX distribution; configure under Settings → Publish. See Publishing for templates and Signature setup.

Optional next steps: AI Pulse Triplet Analysis for scene-level editorial feedback, Inquiry for corpus-level analysis, Author Progress Report for shareable spoiler-safe progress graphics.

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Important

Protect your work. Keep regular vault backups alongside sync. See Obsidian’s backup guide. Obsidian’s File recovery keeps snapshots of your notes, and Obsidian Sync or iCloud keeps a copy on your other devices.