For the writer

How to use PlotCoder, from the door to the script out. Ten minutes. Your agent has its own page, and this one says what your half of the work is.

1. What it is
2. Working with an agent
3. The door
4. A project
5. The wall
6. Reading the wall
7. The pages
8. People on a project
9. Getting things out, and in
10. The words
11. Questions writers asked

1. What it is

PlotCoder is a wall of index cards for breaking a story before you write it. One card is one scene: a headline and the change it causes. You string the cards into an order, mark the turns, fold the corners of the scenes that plant something, and the wall reads itself back and asks you questions — the run that sags, the setup nothing pays off, the person who disappears. When the wall reads right, you write the pages on the cards, and the script goes out as Fountain, Final Draft, Markdown, plain text or PDF.

The method, in five steps: state the logline, the question the story is arguing; mark the beats, the eight to fifteen turns it hangs on; fill the space between them with scenes; read the wall; only then write pages. Nothing here makes you follow it. Everything here is built for it.

2. Working with an agent

PlotCoder is built so that an agent can do everything you can do on the wall, and the way most people will use it is to direct one. You say what you know and what you have not decided; the agent builds the wall, reads it back, and asks. Everything it does lands on your screen as it happens, and every change it makes is a step you can take back with ⌘Z.

Wiring one in. With Claude's own app, the button under the wordmark, Your agent, is three steps and all you need. For anything else, open the PlotCoder wordmark, top left, and at the foot of the sheet The doors, for agents. That sheet, Agents, gives the link to hand an agent, and one way in to a tab — the Claude app, Claude Code or Cursor, a shell with nothing set up, a server of your own — each with a line to read and a line to copy, and the agent's own words behind "the whole of it". Wire it before you start the agent's session; an agent wired from inside a session connects on the next one. Give the account door only to an agent on a machine you trust: it signs in as you, and it shows under People as "an agent, as you" while it runs.

What to give it. A treatment, or a page of notes. The agent's guide tells it to ask you what a treatment should answer — how long it is, the central question, which scenes are the turns, where each happens, what changes in it, who is in it and who is only maybe, what is planted and where it pays off, whether you have a scene two ways or one you have cut and want kept, what is undecided about a person rather than a scene, what must not be invented — and then anything your notes raise that those do not, and to invent nothing. Answer what you know.

What to say when you do not know. Say so, in those words, and the wall holds it. "I don't know yet — leave it open" leaves a card, or a field, open in your words: listed, not asked about, until you decide. "I know where it pays off, not where it is first seen" becomes a thread with a loose end, and the wall asks where the thing is first seen until you say. "Propose the turns and I will strike" is how most writers mark the beats.

When it proposes the turns. If you say "propose them and I will strike", the cards it puts forward wear a dashed bar and the words proposed turn, with keep and strike under your hand, and the same list heads the wall's questions. A proposed card is a scene in every count until you keep it; nothing is a turn on your agent's word.

What it brings back. The reading: the beats, the runs between them in pages, every setup and its payoff, and the questions the wall raises, in the app's words. Ask it to answer from the wall, not from memory, and it will read the wall again. Ask it what is open and what would close each one. Ask it to write a scene, and it writes on the card, from what the wall holds and nothing else.

What it will not do. Decide for you. The agent's rules say questions, not fixes; no opinions about how many beats there should be; no invented people, loglines or facts; and to ask before anything it cannot undo. If it does any of those, tell it, and tell us.

3. The door

plotcoder.com asks for your email and a password. The password has no rules. A new address is in the moment its password is set; there is no account to make first. Forgotten? sends a reset link to the address. That is all the door asks.

Signed in, your projects follow you to every device and are live for the people you share them with. Signed out, the app still works: one project, on this device, in the browser. Nothing you do signed out is uploaded, and the day you sign in, the project comes with you if it holds your work.

4. A project

A project is a film, or a series. It has a name, a premise — the line above every board's logline, what a series is about or what is true before a film starts, and the place for anything true of the whole film and of no one scene: when it runs from and to, what never happens in it — and one or more boards: one wall for a feature, one per episode for a series. The cast is the project's, so a person is one person across every board. The name, the premise, a board's name and the logline can each be left open in your words when you have not decided — "two titles, not chosen" — and the wall lists them without asking. A project also carries its title page: the byline and a contact, which every script out prints under the title with the day's date; for now your agent sets them (set_title_page), and Save as… prints them.

The wordmark, top left, opens Your projects. Each project says what it holds and who changed it last — 2 boards · 7 cards · 4 2/8 pages · changed 14:41 by an agent — so two of one name can be told apart. Click a project to open it. The ⋯ at the end of its row opens the row where it stands: type over the name and Rename; Download a copy, the same file Save project writes; and Delete…, which names the project, counts what goes, offers the copy first, and cannot be undone. Delete the project you have open and the wall opens the newest that is left. The open project's row also holds the people on it and Share with an email. Below the projects: Your agent; then You, with Change email, Change password and Sign out; and last, apart from the rest, Delete account…, which takes every project you own, asks for your password, and cannot be undone. With several projects, signing in asks "What are you working on today?"

The crumb beside the wordmark names the open board when a project has several. Its arrow opens the project panel: the project's name and premise, its boards in order, Add a board, a revision (Start a revision, with its colour, and End), and Delete for a board, which cannot be undone and says how many cards it holds.

5. The wall

The wall is a canvas you can pan and zoom; the view is in the general bar, bottom right, with fit to see everything, and a light or dark canvas.

A card

An empty wall says how to begin, in its middle: Add a card, Start from a structure, or your agent. When an agent is connected its card comes first, with the sentence to say to it and a button to copy it; say it in the agent's window and paste your notes or your treatment after. When none is, Bring in your agent opens the three steps. The three go with the first card on the wall.

New note in the bar makes a card. Tap the words to type: the headline, then the change line, "what changes?". Drag the paper to move it. Under the change line are two more lines: with, the cast — type names, and the cast completes as you type, or add a name and the roster gains it; when you do not know yet whether someone is in the scene, put a question mark after the name — with Marta, Tomás? — and the wall holds it as not decided, in quieter type: it lists it with what is open, does not ask, and counts him neither in the scene nor out of it until you take the mark off or take the name off; and when you do not know who is in a scene at all, or whether there is anyone else, the line offers "Not decided yet…" as the place line does, and your words stand there in the warm colour, after any names: with Ada, Callum · anyone else, I don't know — and at, the place, with the when after a dot: at the pier at Fenit · night. A place is its spelling: type it the same way on every card that happens there, and the line completes it for you. Either part can be left open: the line offers "Not decided yet…" as you type, before the dot for the place and after it for the when, and your words stand there in the warm colour until you decide. The change line can wait the same way: with the card under your hand it offers "Not decided yet…" beneath an empty change line, and your words — "I don't know yet" — stand where the line will go. The wall lists it and does not ask for it, and still asks that card everything else: where it happens, who is in it, where its fold pays off. Under the place line, a shade quieter, a fifth line holds the day and the light: which day of the film's time the scene falls on, and its weather and light — day four · rain on the window. Tap it and type, the day before the dot and the light after; a question mark before either half leaves it in your words. The heading never prints them — a script says NIGHT — but the pages, every export and the brief carry them as a note under it, and the wall never asks for them.

The title area, top centre, is one line: the logline, the story's central question, in a sentence — Can a man who lies for a living tell the truth once, when it costs him the job? A long one is cut short with an ellipsis, never wrapped over the wall, and a count beside it, 2 open, says how much about the story is not decided. Press the line and the story panel opens; in a narrow window, where there is no room for the line, a Story button under the row of buttons opens the same panel. Close it with the × in its corner, with Escape, or by pressing the wall.

The panel holds three things, each with its name and a sentence saying what it is. Logline: the central question. Premise: what is true before the story starts, or a rule the whole of it keeps — five days in August; nobody says "sell" to her face until the end — and, for a series, what the series is about. Either can be left open: Not decided? Say why holds your reason in your own words — two versions, not chosen — so nobody guesses one for you, and I have one now puts the field back.

Open questions, the third, is what you have not decided about the film itself — when it happens, whether it has acts, what runs long — which belongs to no one card. Type a sentence in your own words and press Enter. The wall lists those sentences with what is open and asks nothing about them. When you decide one, decided beside it strikes it. The app never adds a line; your agent adds one only when you have told it you do not know.

The corner

Tap the card's top-left corner and it asks what the card claims. Fold it — this scene plants something — and say what, in your words, on the edge: "Plants · the wrong tools". Leave it open — not decided yet — and the edge carries your words for what is undecided; the wall lists an open card and asks nothing else of it until you clear the words. That is for a scene you are not sure of; when it is only the change line, the place or the when you do not know, leave that one line open instead, and the wall keeps asking about the rest. Set it aside — not in the film — for a scene you cut and will not throw away, an idea with nowhere to go yet, or the version you did not choose: the card goes grey and flat with a dashed edge, loses its number, and leaves the order, the page count, the pages and everything you export, while it stays on the wall where you put it. Where it stood between two scenes the story closes over it. The same corner brings it back, as a card with no arrows, and the wall asks where it goes. When a card has another version behind it, the corner offers to choose one and set the other aside rather than lose it. Start a thread here, or end one here, for a thing that runs through the story and whose far end you do not know yet: the wall draws it as a string through the cards, a ring at the loose end, and asks where it is first seen or where it comes out. When a fold from another board is waiting, the corner offers to pay it off here.

The edge

The top edge of a card says what it claims: the scene's number once the numbers are locked, what it plants and where that pays off, its thread, its open words. Tap the words to change them.

Length, colour, rank

A card is about a page until you say otherwise: tap its length to size it in pages, or leave it unsized. Written, it is measured from its text. The tab on the card changes the paper's colour, which means nothing to the app and whatever you like to you. A card is a scene until you mark it a beat — one of the turns — with the mark on the card's own edge, which the readout counts; marking it never moves it.

Arrows

Drag a card's handle onto another card for an arrow. An arrow says what follows what, and the follows arrows are the story's order: the reading, the numbers and the pages all go by them. Tap an arrow to select it: Sets up makes it a setup — this scene plants something that scene pays off — and back to plain sequence; Delete removes it. A setup arrow leaving a folded card is the payoff, and the wall stops asking. A pair of cards can carry one follows arrow and one setup arrow the same way — a plant whose payoff is the very next scene has both, the dashed setup bowed beside the solid line — and never two of one kind. Once half the film is wired, a card no follows arrow touches is unlinked: in the film and its length, in no run between two turns, last in the order and printed last, and the readout asks where it goes. "Seen early, not decided where" is such a card, and the wall does not seat it for you.

Groups

Drag on the empty canvas to lasso cards, then Group in the bar. A group is a named frame: an act, a sequence, a night. Type its title on the frame; Ungroup on the frame dissolves it and the cards stay where they are. Organize lays the wall out along the arrows, a row per beat, with groups kept together. A card set aside, and an unlinked card, are not laid: each stays where it is, or goes to a row beneath the story when the rows would run under it.

Undo

⌘Z takes back the last step, yours or your agent's, one at a time; ⇧⌘Z puts it back.

6. Reading the wall

The readout, bottom left of the bar, counts the beats and scenes and says how long the wall runs against its target — an estimate, since an unwritten scene is your guess — and how many questions the wall has. Read the wall opens the Asks sheet. At its head, Since you looked: what changed on the wall since you last closed the sheet, by whom and when — your agent's session as a handful of lines in your own terms, "wrote The morning after", "set The bank aside", each with show me — and the agent's last word to you, if it left one, until your next change. Then every question in the app's words, each with the cards it is about, which light up on the wall. A question you have an answer for and do not want asked again can be left, with your reason; it comes back on its own if the wall changes under it. Once scenes are written the sheet also reads the pages against the wall, under their own head: a payoff whose page has not a word of what the fold planted, a card whose page carries fewer than half its change line's words, a want no page of that person's says. Those are read from words, never sense — a page can say a thing in other words, and can name a thing to deny it — so each question says the words it counted, and under Reminders › Read the wall every setup quotes the page's sentence where the plant's word lands. Whether one turn undoes the one before it is yours to read.

The story map, along the bottom, is the wall laid on a page axis: the beats as marks, the runs between them as lengths, setups as arcs from plant to payoff, an arc to nowhere for a fold nothing pays off, and the target as a line. Move along the strip to read the story. It stays in view while you rearrange. The board's length is set beside the story map's tab. A new board says Set a length and claims none; press it and choose A feature (120 pages), An hour (60), A half-hour (30), a number of your own, or Not decided, in your words for why. Once chosen, the same place reads ≈12 of 60 pages · an hour; press it to change it. The words at the map's far end — an hour · 60 →, or set a length → — open the same menu. The length is the board's, so in a series each episode has its own. The bar's readout shows the same number, to type over. Your agent sets it the same way: "it is an hour".

Start from a structure lays a structure's beats on an empty wall, or sets one beside a wall that has beats — Turns, three acts, eight sequences, fifteen beats, the story circle, or one of your own saved from a wall — and says which of your beats answers which of its, and how far off.

Reminders, top right, hold the house principles the app starts with, what a writer can ask an agent for, and any rule you want kept in front of you. What these words mean, in the bar, is the app's glossary.

Help, top right, is this page and the words, searched by your own question: type it, and what answers it appears as you go, with a link to the section. When nothing answers, Ask this question sends it to the people who build PlotCoder, signed in or not; the answer lands here, without your name, and, if you were signed in, under Your questions in the sheet. It takes days, not minutes.

7. The pages

Pages, top right, is the script as the wall reads now: a heading per scene from its place and when, the headline as a line of synopsis, and the scene's text where there is one. Click a scene to write it, on its card; the card is then measured from the text, and the readout says so. A card you have given no place heads its scene No place yet: and then its headline, in the app, in print and in every export, so nobody reads the headline as a place; give the card a place and the mark goes. A place you have left open heads its scene Place not decided: and the headline the same way, with your words for why on the line beneath. In Pages, a small mark in the margin — ◂ knows — sits beside an action line that says what someone knows, feels, thinks or wants, which a camera cannot see. It is the same mark your agent is shown, so you are both looking at the same page. It is a mark, not a question: keep the line or show it, as you like, and it never prints. Outline is the same script as a list.

Before a draft goes out, the project panel can lock the numbers, so every scene keeps its number and a scene added later takes a letter; a revision marks what changed since, in its colour, on the wall and in every format out.

Under the wordmark, top left, a small button says whether an agent is on your wall: Agent · here while one is connected, Agent · 12 min for when one last was, and Add your agent until one has been. It opens Your agent, and the sheet shows the state you are in. When no agent has been, it is three steps with one open at a time: sign in here; add PlotCoder to Claude, with an address, a header's name and a header's value to copy; and say hello with the message it gives you. The header's value holds your email and password, so the sheet makes it on your own device from what you type and keeps nothing; treat it as you treat the password. When one has been, the sheet is what to say: the first message of a new chat, and the asks a writer reaches for — break my notes into a wall, read the wall and raise questions, draft a sequence, break a scene into shots — each a sentence to copy. The head of the sheet says when an agent was last here and turns green while one is. It never says one is waiting: an agent acts when you speak to it in its own window.

Shots, in the bar — three small frames — is for the pictures, once a scene is written and your agent has broken it into shots. A shot is a line in the scene's text, in double brackets; it never prints and is never counted, and you will see it where you type the scene. PlotCoder makes no picture itself: it hands you the words, you make the picture in your own image tool, and you bring it back. The sheet walks you through it in the order that works — the look, the people, the places, then the shots — because a picture of a shot holds a face only when a picture of the person goes with the prompt. Every row is the same: copy the prompt and paste it into your image tool; name the file as the row says (Copy gives you the name); bring it back — drop the file on the row's box, choose it, or click the box and paste. A file dropped anywhere on the sheet finds its row by its name. For a person or a place you may tick I have it, outside the app instead, and the step is done without the picture being kept here. A shot says first what to attach — the pictures of who is in it and where — and waits, greyed, until those are done; its own picture is kept here, since it is the frame a video tool starts from. When a person or a place has nothing written under looks, the row asks you for it before it gives a prompt: the app invents no face and no room. The strip shows a scene's pictures side by side, in order, to see whether the look holds. Signed out, a tick is all the sheet can keep; sign in to keep pictures.

Cast, top right, is the roster: everyone on the project, with their scenes. Open a person's page for what they look like, how they sound, what they want, what they need, and your notes, and pictures of them. When there is something about a person you have not decided — what he goes to the town for; whether she knew — the page offers Something not decided yet…, and your words stand there in the warm colour. The wall lists it with everything else you have left open, and does not ask.

8. People on a project

In the wordmark's sheet, in the open project's row, Share with an email puts another writer on the project. Both of you write it; changes arrive live, as steps the other can undo, and the sheet shows who is on the project and who is here now. An agent working your account shows there too, as you. The owner can remove a person; a person can leave.

9. Getting things out, and in

Save as… in the Pages head takes the script out as Markdown, plain text, Fountain, Final Draft or PDF, copied or downloaded. Every script ends with a page, What is not decided: your own words for what is still open on the wall, and the scenes held two ways or set aside, so a reader never takes a draft for more decided than it is; your agent can leave it off a draft that goes out clean. A scene whose card holds someone with a question mark prints one line under its heading saying so, from the card, so the page never decides the room for you. The transfer arrows beside Reminders save the whole project as a file and open one, and bring a Final Draft script in onto the open board's cards. A project file is the wall, the cast, the reminders and your structures; pictures and takes stay on the account.

10. The words

The app uses a few words in one sense each — beat, run, fold, setup, thread, open, left, the readout — and they are all in What these words mean, in the bar. Your agent uses the same words, so you can say them to each other.