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A tour of your workspace

A walk through your project once it's open — the menu down the left side, the chat panel, and the little strip at the bottom that tells you everything is saved.

When you open a project, you land on the Script editor with a slim menu running down the left edge. That menu is how you move between every view of your screenplay — the script itself, the corkboard, your characters, your treatment, and more. Nisaba, your AI writing partner, sits in a panel you can open on the right. And a quiet status strip keeps you posted on saving and on anything Nabu is working on in the background. This page introduces each piece so the rest of the manual feels familiar.

The left menu (your navigation rail)

The narrow strip of icons down the left side is your navigation rail. By default it shows just icons to stay out of your way; hover over it and it slides open to reveal the name beside each icon. Whichever view you're currently on is highlighted.

Tip: If you're not sure what an icon is, hover and the rail expands so you can read the labels — no need to memorize them.

At the very top is the NABU mark. Click it any time to go back to your dashboard — the home screen that lists all your screenplays. (Hover over it and the little logo animation replays, just for fun.)

Down at the bottom, pinned in place, is the Settings gear. Inside a project, that gear takes you to this project's settings — not your account settings.

Note: If your project still needs setting up, a shortcut to the guided start-a-script flow — the wizard — appears in the rail. Once your story has a shape, that shortcut goes away.

Here's every destination in the rail, top to bottom, and what each one is for.

Script

The main writing surface — where you type and edit your screenplay in proper industry format. You can work on the whole script at once or zoom into a single scene, and a scene list on the left lets you jump around. This is where you'll spend most of your time. See The script editor.

Title Page

The cover of your screenplay — title, your name, and contact details. See The title page.

Summary

A read-only, at-a-glance digest of your story's foundation, shown as three stacked cards:

  • Logline — your story in one line, shown big.
  • Premise & Theme — the thematic question your story asks, its emotional core, and its message.
  • Synopsis — your story told as flowing prose.

Summary is the first proof that your story's backbone exists. You can't edit anything here — it just shows you what's been captured — but if your story has changed and these cards have fallen behind, an Update button appears at the top to bring them back in line. To edit the underlying logline, premise, and synopsis, see Logline, synopsis, and treatment.

Note: A small dot may appear on a card when the story content behind it has changed and the card hasn't caught up yet. That's just a heads-up — use Update when you want to refresh it.

Treatment

Your story told as a prose document — longer than a synopsis, the narrative version of your screenplay you can read and edit. See The treatment.

Board

Your screenplay as a wall of index cards — one card per scene — for working on structure without getting lost in the words. You can drag cards to reorder them, add or remove scenes, and recolor a card right where it sits; click a card to open it and edit its short summary there. The Board (also called the corkboard) has two layouts: Story Zones, which groups your cards by the stage of the story they belong to, and Freeform, where you pin cards wherever you like. See The corkboard.

Note: When Nisaba suggests a change to your structure, small markers may appear on the board to show what she's proposing. For everyday writing you usually won't see these — they show up only when an AI proposal is on the table.

Temporal

The big-picture, visual map of your whole screenplay in one place. It has three sections you can scroll between:

  • Outline — at the top: your scenes as a tidy, drag-to-reorder list grouped by acts and zones. (There's no separate "Outline" page — this is the outline. Old outline links land you here.)
  • Dynamics — charts of your story's emotional intensity, tension, and pacing across the script.
  • Motifs — a string-board of the themes and threads that recur through your story.

See The Temporal page.

Characters

Your character bible — the cast of your screenplay, with the details Nabu and Nisaba track for each one. See Characters.

Locations

Your location directory — every place your story happens. See Locations.

Influences

The reference films, shows, and styles steering the look and feel of your project, so Nisaba writes in a voice that fits your taste. See Influences.

Doctor

The Script Doctor — Nabu's feedback feature. Ask for coverage (a development-executive read of your script) and you'll get a verdict — Recommend, Consider, or Pass — along with notes. See Coverage and the Script Doctor.

Note: Coverage / Script Doctor needs a desktop or laptop screen for now — it isn't available on a phone.

Costs credits: Running coverage uses AI, so it spends credits. The exact amount depends on the length of your script.

History

Your safety net. Every meaningful change is saved automatically, and this page lets you create named save points, compare two versions side by side, and roll back to an earlier version of your project, a single document, or one scene. See Save points and history.

Export

Where you take your finished work out of Nabu — as a PDF, a Fountain file, a Final Draft file, or a complete Nabu backup bundle. See Exporting your screenplay.

Note: You may notice a Journal entry near the bottom of the rail marked Coming soon. It isn't ready yet, so it's greyed out and can't be opened.

Logline

Your one-line story summary lives inside the Summary page (the big quote at the top) and is shaped during the wizard or with Nisaba's help. See Logline and premise.

Settings (pinned at the bottom)

Settings for this project — its details and preferences. (For your account, sign-in, and notifications, use the settings reachable from your dashboard instead.) See Account and settings.

Nisaba — your chat partner

Nisaba is your AI writing partner, and she's never more than a click away while you work. On a computer she opens as a chat panel beside your script; you can ask her questions about your story, have her draft or revise scenes, or talk through a problem. On a phone she rides along as a floating chat button you can tap any time.

Nisaba can also drop inline suggestions right into your script — small proposed edits you accept or decline. To learn how to read, accept, or dismiss those, see Inline AI suggestions. For a fuller guide to talking with her, see Working with Nisaba.

Costs credits: Chatting with Nisaba and asking her to write or revise uses AI, which spends credits.

The status strip (saving and progress)

You almost never have to think about saving in Nabu — it happens for you. Two quiet signals keep you informed:

  • At the bottom of the left menu, a footer shows your draft number, your script's page count (like Draft 1 · 84p), and a small save indicator that flips between Saving… and All changes saved as you type. When it says all changes are saved, your work is safe.
  • A status bar surfaces anything Nabu is doing in the background — for example, when Nisaba is analyzing your script, or when a long task is running. If your story has drifted out of sync, a small count appears on the AI button here so you know there's something to review.

Note: Nabu also keeps a private backup of your unsaved edits in your browser, so if your computer crashes or you close the tab by accident, your latest typing comes back when you return — no prompt, no lost work.

On a phone

On a small screen the left menu tucks away. Tap the hamburger menu (the three-line icon at the top-left) to slide open the same list of destinations, plus Settings and a Report a bug button. The first entry, All Projects, takes you back to your dashboard. The menu closes itself as soon as you tap a destination.

When you're in the script editor on a phone, a Scenes button appears at the top-right to open your scene list. (It only shows up on the editor — on other pages you won't see it.)

Good to know

  • The menu highlights wherever you are, so you can always tell which view you're on.
  • The Outline and Timeline you may remember from elsewhere both live inside Temporal now — there's no separate page for either.
  • The screenplay formatting controls (choosing a line type, keyboard shortcuts) live inside the editor itself, not in this menu — see The script editor.
  • The left menu and its save footer disappear while you're in the wizard, which gives you a focused, full-screen experience with its own saving indicator.