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Characters and locations#

Your cast and your settings — one a bible you build, the other a directory that builds itself from your scenes.

Characters#

Open Characters from your project's sidebar. On the left is a roster with Find character search and Sort characters dropdown (by Role, Name, or Scenes) — shift-click a second character to compare interactions. On the right, a detail pane shows the selected character's Character engine (Want, Need, Lie, Afraid of, Arc), Voice direction, Key dynamics, and Scene appearances, with Dialogue and Edit buttons.

From a screenplay cue, Show NAME in Characters opens the matching record, including saved aliases and differences in capitals.

Comparing two characters, reading a character's Dialogue, editing, and New character each have their own address. Your browser's Back button returns you to the character you were on, and reloading or sharing the link opens the same view.

Adding a character#

  1. Click New character.
  2. Type a Name (required — Nabu uppercases it automatically).
  3. Pick a Role — protagonist, antagonist, supporting, minor, or extra.
  4. Optionally fill in Age, Description, and the story fields (Want, Need, Lie, Afraid of, Arc).
  5. Click Create character.

Letting Nisaba fill in the blanks#

Open a character, click Edit, then click Deepen — Nisaba reads your story and fills in the empty fields. You can edit anything she wrote. During a quiet stretch the bar says Working... instead of a percentage.

Uses your plan: Deepen may ask you to wait if character generation is already running. If your usage cannot cover it, Nabu explains the usage refusal before starting; your character stays unchanged.

Editing a character#

Click Edit to open the editing modal. The modal autosaves as you type, and each field grows to fit what you write. Lie is what they believe that isn't true. Press ⌘/Ctrl+Enter when you're done; Esc or Back closes once your latest changes are saved; if saving fails, the editor stays open. Click Revert to restore the character to the last checkpoint.

The character right-click menu#

  • Ask Nisaba about NAME — starts a paid chat with Nisaba about what this character knows versus what the audience knows (useful for dramatic irony).
  • Rename "{name}" everywhere… — updates every cue line and reference across your script and reports how many scenes changed.
  • Show scenes — lists every scene this character appears in.
  • Report a bug… — opens a form to report something wrong with this character.
  • Delete character — removes the character after you confirm. Does not delete the scenes they appear in.

Uses your plan: the contextual Ask starts Nisaba’s conversation. Deepen remains in the character editing window. The project-wide Cast Report CSV is under Export → Production reports.

Renaming a character everywhere#

Right-click a character card and choose Rename "{name}" everywhere…, or rename from the editor: when you change a cue line, Nabu offers to rename them everywhere and tells you how many scenes it updated. (See editor menus.)

Locations#

Open Locations from your project's sidebar. You don't create locations by hand — Nabu builds the directory automatically from your scene headings. Write a scene set in INT. KITCHEN — DAY and a Kitchen location appears.

Each location shows INT/EXT, times of day, scene count, and approximate screen time. Sort by scene count or name, and group flat or split by INT/EXT.

Adding detail to a location#

Click a location row to expand it. Inside, you can write Description, Atmosphere, Significance, Production notes, and Aliases — all autosave as you type. You can nest a location under another (for example, sub-rooms inside a building).

Letting Nisaba analyze a location#

  • Analyze (inside an expanded location) — hands that location to Nisaba to describe and characterize.
  • Sync All (top of the page) — rebuilds the scene index, then runs Nisaba's analysis on every location that doesn't have one yet.

Uses your plan: Analyze and Sync All.

If an analysis fails, Nabu shows “We’ve been notified, please try again in a moment” with the job ID; cancelled or missing analyses have their own message.

A badge in each location's detail tells you whether it was AI summarized, Analyzed, Manual, or Not analyzed yet.

Other location actions#

  • Organize — sorts locations into a parent/child hierarchy from their names, without overriding nesting you set by hand.
  • CSV — downloads a spreadsheet of your locations.
  • Right-click a row — Rename location… or Delete location (after confirming). Deleting a location does not delete the scenes set there.
  • Scene chips — hover to see a scene's summary, or double-click to jump to that scene in the editor.

How they connect to your script#

  • Cue autocomplete. As you write dialogue, Nabu suggests names already used as cues in your script. Cue and location names are shown in capitals automatically.
  • Short names and aliases. Scene rewrites, dialogue checks and full-script continuity checks use saved character aliases to connect a short cue to its character. A speaker without a matching character record still stays in the read.
  • Scene headings make locations. Every place you name in a scene heading turns into a Locations entry automatically.
  • The board feeds the cards. A character's Scene appearances and a location's scene chips come from where your scenes sit on the board. Move scenes and these update automatically.

Good to know#

  • Deleting never cascades. Removing a character or location leaves the scenes that use them untouched.