What is Notebook.ai?

Most creatives have at least one old notebook lying around somewhere, full of old plots, interesting characters, monsters, enchanting locations, or a myriad of other margin-scribbled thoughts. Others have piles of old "plot idea" or "world idea" documents in their favorite cloud storage. Others still have their brilliant, rich worlds fermenting in their heads.

Notebook.ai is a worldbuilding tool that organizes, saves, and helps in fully fleshing out your fictional worlds, your way.

Your digital notebook takes full advantage of being just that — digital. Instead of fitting notes in the margins of pages past, you'll always have space to expand every idea. Instead of reading backward in your notes to remember who gives your character a legendary sword, every little detail about them is organized and just a click away. You don't need to flip around the pages in your old notebook to jump from a character to their birthplace to other characters born there; every "link" between your ideas is a real link, and lets you click to jump from one to the next.

How do I use it?

It's actually really easy. Just sign up and create something — anything — and you're doing it right.

Most users start by creating a universe to hold everything they create afterwards. You can call it your game's title, "My Universe", or whatever you want. You'll be prompted to enter a description and a few other questions, but everything's entirely optional.

Once you have a universe, try creating a character or two for your main characters. You'll notice the process of creating a notebook page is exactly the same regardless of what type of page you're creating. You click create, you're presented with a bunch of optional fields to fill out about it, and you're done. You can create a location for where your game starts, and items for any relevant objects or trinkets throughout your plot.

Once you've got the basics, just expand outward for your game world! Right now, there are nine different page types you can create in Notebook.ai.

Separate your worlds with Universes

In addition to the page types detailed above, you can also create Universes.

You can think of a universe as a bucket of time or space: a literal universe, a world, a country, a time period, even just the park down the street — your universe contains everything related to the game you're building, and lets you focus entirely on just what's relevant right now, even when you create multiple games in Notebook.ai.

When you create a character, a location, or anything else within Notebook.ai, you'll be asked what universe it belongs to. When you visit that universe's page in your notebook later, you'll see everything inside it from one convenient place.

Keep your world focused with consistent details

Having an in-depth reference while developing your game lets you quickly look up even the smallest of details when you need them and keep working uninterrupted. You'll never again have to flip backward to find out what quest rewards should be, or exactly how much a mega-hyper-potion heals. Everything you need is organized and at your fingertips.

If you're not the type to build your world out completely before development, Notebook.ai can also be used as you go for the same kind of references. Each time you introduce a new character, simply create a character page for them (it's fast!). When you describe anything about them, you can jot it down in its rightful place and anyone on your team can then refer back to it later.

And, of course, if the default fields don't cover every little detail of your world, you can always create new categories and fields on any content type, like "biggest weakness" on characters or "hidden treasures" for locations. It's your world — track anything you want!

Export your entire notebook in more and more formats

We want to make sure you know you own your ideas, so we provide multiple formats for you to export your entire notebook — or individual page types like characters or locations — any time.

Right now, you can export content from the "Notebook Downloads" link in the top-right after signing up. We support exporting in CSV, JSON, XML, and a text-based "outline" format that's great for printing out and marking all over. Exporting is free, always available, and immediate.

How much does it cost?

How does it compare to other worldbuilding software?

Who owns the ideas I store in Notebook.ai?

You do, 100%. We've written more about this in our privacy policy.

Additionally, all content is private by default and only accessible by you. When you click the "share" link on any content, you're given the option to mark either that individual page or the universe it lives in as "public" or "private". A public universe allows viewers to click around and see every page in that universe, while a public page in a private universe allows only that page to be viewed. You can mark anything private again at any time and it will be instantly applied.