The Deterministic Narrative Compiler for Authors Who Take Canon Seriously.
Stop juggling Scrivener, Aeon Timeline, AutoCrit, and Vellum. Ace Plotline combines an event-sourced master timeline, an automated zero-cloud Knowledge Firewall, and a fine-press publishing engine into a lightning-fast native Mac app.
The $800+ Author Stack Is Broken.
Modern novel and series writing has become an agonizing exercise in software synchronization. Writers draft in Scrivener, track dates in Aeon Timeline, audit style in AutoCrit, lay out pages in Vellum, and dump lore notes into Notion or World Anvil. When a detail changes in Chapter 4, nothing alerts you that Chapter 42 is now physically impossible. The result is continuity rot, subscription fatigue, and hours wasted manually formatting text.
Catch Plot Holes at the Speed of Thought.
The Knowledge Firewall is not a generative AI rewriter. It is a deterministic compiler for narrative logic.
Epistemic State Tracking
Tracks exactly who knows what, when they learned it, and who was in the room. Prevents characters from acting on secrets before their narrative introduction.
Transit & Geography Physics
Calculates transit speeds across your custom world maps. Flags impossible physical journeys before your readers catch them in review.
Physical Possession Ledger
Maintains strict causal tracking of items, weapons, and disguises. Ensures an artifact cannot be drawn in Scene B if it was left in Scene A.
Zero Cloud LLMs. 100% Private.
Runs locally on your Mac using Aho-Corasick multi-pattern search and directed acyclic graph (DAG) causal traversals. Your raw prose is never uploaded to third-party AI models or used for LLM training.
One Unified Workspace. Four Creative Perspectives.
Phase 1: Planning & World Genesis
Establish the bedrock of your universe before drafting a single scene.
- Universal Timeline: Anchor narrative beats to custom calendar epochs, orbital leap formulas, and multi-era timelines.
- Living Universe Bible: Relational database of characters, factions, physical laws, and cross-referenced lore nodes.
- Multi-POV Scene Matrix: Visualize character arcs simultaneously across chapters and timelines without structural overlap.
Phase 2: Writing & Drafting Canvas
A distraction-free native AppKit text editor engineered for sustained creative focus.
- Event-Sourced Playlists: Scenes are compiled dynamically into novels or anthologies without duplicating underlying text files.
- Memory-Paged Drafting: 5-chapter LRU streaming ensures butter-smooth typing even on 500,000-word multi-book series.
- Mechanical Typewriter Mode: Focused vertical centering, subtle mechanical audio feedback, and customizable typographical grids.
Phase 3: Editing & Diagnostics
Deep structural analysis without the annual subscription fees of online style tools.
- Firewall Diagnostics: Instant flagging of temporal paradoxes, anachronisms, and broken character knowledge frontiers.
- Pacing & Emotional Topography: Visual sentence-length rhythm maps, dialogue-to-narrative ratios, and POV distribution charts.
- Non-Destructive Mutation Triad: Test structural plot refactors with immediate rollback safety.
Phase 4: Pre-Press & Fine Publishing
Transform your raw manuscript into bookstore-ready print and digital editions in seconds.
- Streaming CoreGraphics PDF Engine: Compiles interior print layouts in bounded 50-page memory chunks with dynamic gutter calculation.
- Vendor-Targeted EPUB 3: Generates validated, clean digital files optimized for Apple Books, Amazon KDP, and Kobo.
- SSML Audiobook Generation: Exports structured markup tagged with character voice cues for narrator studios and TTS engines.
Engineered for Ownership. Built for Speed.
| Feature | Ace Plotline | Scrivener 3 | Vellum | SaaS Stack (AutoCrit / Notion) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total Cost | $79 Perpetual | $59.99 (Drafting only) | $249.99 (Formatting only) | $180–$300+ / Year |
| Continuity Compiler | Yes (Knowledge Firewall) | None (Manual text search) | None | Manual Wiki |
| Memory Footprint | 38–42 MB (Native Swift) | ~120 MB | ~180 MB | 800 MB–2 GB+ (Electron/Web) |
| Timeline Relational Model | Yes (Event-Sourced DAG) | Separate $65 plugin required | None | Clunky database tables |
| Print Interior Typesetting | Yes (Built-in CoreGraphics) | Basic compile engine | Yes | None |
| Offline Privacy | 100% Offline / Local Sandboxed | Local files | Local files | Cloud-hosted / Data scraping risk |
Sovereign Software for Professional Storytellers.
- Full access to all 4 Phases: Planning, Writing, Editing, and Publishing
- All minor updates and feature enhancements throughout 1.x
- Install on all personal Macs via universal license key
- 100% local operation: No mandatory account creation, zero analytics telemetry
30-day money-back guarantee. Requires macOS 14.0 Sonoma or higher.
Hardware Empathy by Design.
Architecture
Optimized natively for Apple Silicon M1/M2/M3/M4
Operating System
macOS 14.0 Sonoma or macOS 15.0 Sequoia
Memory Profile
Engineered to run fluidly on base 8 GB Mac hardware with sub-42 MB baseline RAM usage
File Format
Open, human-readable .aceplotline package structure (JSON manifests + Markdown scene files)