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Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the words you'll meet around Nabu — from Nisaba to Fountain — each in one short sentence, with a link to read more.

If a term on a page ever looks unfamiliar, this is the place to check it. Terms are listed alphabetically.

Board (corkboard)

The visual wall of index cards where every scene appears as a card laid out in story order, so you can drag, group, and reshape your story by feel. See The board.

Coverage (Script Doctor)

A professional read on your script — a panel of AI readers that returns a single verdict, a scorecard, and written notes, the way a development executive would. See Coverage and the Script Doctor.

Note: Coverage is a desktop-only feature. On a phone, you'll see a message asking you to open it on a larger screen.

Credits

Nabu's unit of work — your balance is spent when Nisaba or another AI feature does something for you, like writing a scene or running coverage. See How credits work.

Note: What each action costs is approximate (it varies by the AI model and the length of your script), and the current pricing is always shown in the app.

FDX (Final Draft)

The file format used by Final Draft and other industry screenwriting apps — Nabu can export your screenplay as an .fdx file so you can open it in those programs. See Exporting your screenplay.

Fountain

A simple plain-text way of writing screenplays that any program can read — Nabu can import a .fountain file and export one, and it's the format your script is stored in under the hood. See Importing a script and Exporting your screenplay.

Logline

The one-sentence heart of your story — the "north star" line every part of Nabu reads first to understand what you're writing. See Logline, synopsis, and treatment.

Nabu

The app itself — an AI-native screenwriting tool built to help you finish a screenplay, even when only the feelings, themes, and moments are clear and the structure feels overwhelming. See the manual home.

Nisaba

Your AI writing partner inside Nabu — she interviews you about your vision, drafts and revises scenes, watches your story for continuity, and reads your script when you ask. She has a name; she's never just "the AI." See Meet Nisaba.

Outline

The clean, linear list of every scene in order, grouped by act and zone — it's a panel that lives at the top of the Temporal page, not a separate screen.

Note: Nabu used to have a separate Outline page. It lives on the Temporal page now, and old links send you straight there.

Project

One screenplay — its script, characters, locations, treatment, and everything else live together as a single project. See Your first project.

Scene

One scene of your screenplay — a single unit of action in one place and time, the building block everything else is made of. See The editor.

Sequence

A named group of scenes that belong together as one larger unit — like The Heist or The Chase — created by selecting cards and wrapping them on the board. See The board.

Synopsis

Your story told as a flowing one-pager — longer than the logline, shorter than the treatment, summarizing the whole script in prose. See Logline, synopsis, and treatment.

Temporal page

The single page that lays your whole story out over time — the outline at the top, charts of your story's rhythm and intensity in the middle, and your story's threads — the promises it makes and where they land — at the bottom. See The Temporal page.

Treatment

The prose version of your story — a narrative bridge between your raw vision and the finished screenplay, written out as readable paragraphs rather than script format. See Logline, synopsis, and treatment.

Version (and restore)

A saved snapshot of your work that you can return to — Nabu keeps a history of these, and you can save a named one yourself, then restore an earlier one if you want to roll back. See History and versions.

Wizard

The guided "start a screenplay" flow where Nisaba interviews you about your vision and walks you step by step from a logline through to your first scenes. See The wizard.

Zone

A labeled stretch of your story — like Setup, Midpoint, or Climax — that groups scenes by where they sit in the overall arc; Nabu reads these to understand your structure. See The board and The Temporal page.