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Editing & Manuscript Polish

Ruthless Editor

Watch the refreshed Ruthless Editor

3:37 walkthrough · Six chapters · Actual app captures · Fictional example · Controlled responses · AI narration · English captions

Read the walkthrough transcript

Ruthless Editor now gives you a saved workspace for line editing, with the original manuscript preserved. This walkthrough uses a fictional story and controlled demonstration responses, with AI narration. Name your manuscript, then paste a scene or import a file. Text, Markdown, Word, EPUB and PDF are supported. Scanned PDFs need optical character recognition. Imports preserve extracted text, not Word formatting. Review the imported text before analysis. Enter your genre and editorial boundaries. State the point of view, tense, and effects you want to keep. You can add a sample of your own writing as context. Put exact wording you want to preserve in Protected phrases, one phrase per line. Those matches are case sensitive. Proposals that overlap a protected phrase cannot be accepted. Intentional repetition, fragments and pauses should be judged in context, not automatically removed. Choose your provider and model, then start analysis. Each segment uses your provider account. The progress panel shows exactly how much imported text has been analyzed. Here, a simulated interruption leaves completed work saved and the remaining segments pending. Reopen this workspace and choose Resume analysis to continue. Pause after current request waits for the current response to finish and save. An interrupted chapter is never presented as a clean result. Each proposal shows the original passage beside an editable replacement. Read the reason and decide whether the change serves your story. Accept edit includes it in the edited draft. Reject edit leaves the original wording. You can change the proposed replacement yourself. Changing it resets the decision to pending, so you must accept the revised wording again. Two overlapping alternatives cannot both be accepted. An empty replacement means deletion, so review that choice carefully. Select View source passage to inspect the original wording in context. Its positions refer to imported text, not printed page numbers. Only the matched occurrence changes when you accept a proposal. Repeated phrases elsewhere remain untouched. Undo decision returns the proposal to pending and restores the original wording in the edited draft. The model can still misunderstand your intention. Matching the quotation proves where it came from, not that its editing advice is correct. The edited draft contains only accepted changes. Everything else stays as imported, including segments that have not been analyzed. Export the edited draft, original source or review report as needed. Export backup keeps your source, progress, proposals and decisions without connection settings. Importing a backup creates a separate workspace. Saves stay in this browser, so export before changing devices or clearing browser data. Changing the source or brief starts a separate analysis pass and preserves the earlier work.

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Updated September 8, 2026: Ruthless Editor now saves manuscripts, keeps exact source passages, and builds an edited draft only from proposals you accept.

1. Import and protect your manuscript

  1. Choose New manuscript and add a title. Paste a scene or import TXT, Markdown, DOCX, EPUB or PDF.
  2. Files may be up to 50 MB and projects up to 5 million imported characters. PDF reads extractable text on every page; scans need OCR. EPUB follows publisher spine order. Check import notes and reading order.
  3. Add your genre, author intent, POV, tense and boundaries. An optional sample of your own writing gives provisional voice context.
  4. Enter Protected phrases one per line. Matches are exact and case sensitive. Proposals overlapping those words cannot be accepted. To change these boundaries, revise the brief and deliberately start a new pass.
  5. Book DNA import is optional. Earlier extraction may have omitted text; use your original file for complete coverage.

2. Analyze and resume

  1. Choose your provider and model through the shared model controls. Refresh models or enter a custom model ID supported by your account. Provider billing applies to each analysis request.
  2. Start analysis reviews the complete imported text in bounded segments. Long chapters may use several segments.
  3. Each completed result saves separately. Failed, incomplete or unmatched responses remain pending; completed work stays available.
  4. Pause after current request lets the in-flight response finish and save. Reopen and choose Resume analysis to continue pending segments.
  5. All segments analyzed means the requested pass finished, not that every error was found. This is line-editing guidance, not a verified whole-book continuity audit.

3. Review each proposed change

  1. Read the original beside the proposed replacement and its contextual reason. Labels distinguish errors, optional suggestions and questions; those labels still come from the model.
  2. View source passage shows the selected original in context. Positions refer to imported characters, not printed page numbers. Repeated phrases are matched to a particular occurrence.
  3. Accept edit includes the replacement in the edited draft. Reject edit keeps the original. Undo decision returns it to pending and restores the original in the assembled draft.
  4. You can edit the replacement yourself. Any change resets its decision to pending and requires a new acceptance. An empty replacement deletes the quoted passage when accepted.
  5. Overlapping edits cannot both be accepted. Undo one before selecting an alternative. Protected wording remains blocked.
  6. Add author notes and filter by pending, accepted or rejected proposals. These decisions save automatically.

4. Export and recover

  • Export edited draft includes only accepted changes. Unreviewed segments and all other text remain exactly as imported. Export original source retains the immutable source for that pass. Both are plain text; Word formatting is not retained.
  • Export review report includes coverage, source quotations, proposals, decisions and notes. Pending proposals are not instructions to apply.
  • Export backup saves the full project and decisions without connection settings. Import backup creates a separate workspace.
  • Work saves in this browser, without cross-device or cross-edition synchronization. Export before changing devices or clearing browser data.
  • Changing the draft or brief creates a separate analysis pass when you start again. Earlier analysis stays attached to its original source. No repeated rewrite happens automatically.
  • Recovery keeps up to eight checkpoints before imports, analysis and restores. A stale tab stops saving so it cannot overwrite a newer version; export that tab’s work and reload.

The same refresh is available through existing standalone, Suite, Premium and VIP entitlements. Existing prices and membership rules continue.