Release Notes

Styles Panel

A complete Word-style paragraph formatting system:

• Six default styles — Body, Heading 1, Heading 2, Block Quote, Scene Break, and Epigraph. Apply from the ribbon dropdown with one click.
• Create your own — "New Style" or "New Style from Selection" captures your formatting as a reusable style. "Update from Selection" changes a style to match what you've formatted by hand.
• One source of truth — change Body's font in Settings or the Styles Panel, and every Body paragraph updates instantly. No hunting through documents.
• Real Word styles on export — your styles become real w:style entries in .docx, so editors and typesetters see "Epigraph" in their Styles pane, not anonymous formatting.
• Import preserves styles — .docx Word styles map to project styles. Unknown styles are created automatically. Re-importing the same file doesn't create duplicates.
• Styles Panel — manage, create, edit, rename, and delete styles. Draggable and poppable-out to a second monitor. Preview each style's formatting live.

Cross-document find & replace

• Search everywhere — across all documents, the manuscript, selected documents, cards, or the current document. Results grouped by document with context snippets.
• Replace with batch undo — Replace All across 20 documents, then one ⌘Z per document to revert. Each document's replacements are one undoable operation.
• Live results — results update as you type in both the Find field and the editor. Matches highlighted in every open editor with an accessible active-match outline.
• Cards included — search card summaries, notes, and optionally titles. Mirrored card notes are searched as their document, not doubled.
• Scoped — Manuscript scope only searches manuscript descendants. Trash is always excluded.
• Pop-out — detach the panel to a second monitor and click results to navigate in the main editor.

Claude Haiku 5.5 (Efficient mode)

Efficient mode now runs on Anthropic's latest small model:

• 90% cheaper — $0.10/$0.50 per million tokens (was $1.00/$5.00)
• Better responses — more thorough, naturally-written answers
• Longer replies — output cap doubled from 1024 to 2048 tokens
• ~1 credit per query instead of ~3 — your monthly budget goes about 3x further on Efficient

List indent via ruler

The ruler now moves an entire list (bullet/number + text together) instead of sliding the text away from its marker. The first-line marker hides in list mode. Different styles show different default indents on the ruler, so a Block Quote paragraph and a Body paragraph display their own starting positions.

Paste and Match Style

A new Edit menu item and macOS context menu entry (⌘⌥⇧V). Pastes clipboard text matching the target paragraph's style so you get no formatting surprises. Each pasted line gets the target's style with no marks.

Instant pop-outs

Pop-out windows now appear instantly with content. Moondoggle pre-warms one hidden window in the background after your project opens. When you pop out a card, chat, stats, or any panel, that pre-warmed window is claimed, positioned, and shown with content in under 50ms.

Small caps, SmartQuotes, and SmartDashes

• Small caps — a new text formatting option (Aa button in the ribbon, ⌘⇧K). Apply to text or set it on an entire style. Exports correctly to DOCX, EPUB, and RTF.
• Smart quotes — straight quotes automatically become curly quotes as you type. "hello" becomes "hello".
• Smart dashes — -- becomes an em dash (—), and a space-hyphen-space becomes an en dash (–). Both toggleable in Settings → Editor → Auto-Corrections.

macOS pop-out improvements

• Pop-out title bars now match your theme (previously used the system's default black or white)
• The Styles Panel can be dragged out or popped out with ↗, just like Settings and Chat

Automatic backups, everywhere

Backups are now on by default for every project.

• Per-project backup folder. Each project backs up to its own Backups folder inside the .moon bundle. You can change this per-project in Settings → Backup.
• Backs up when you quit. ⌘Q (Mac) and Ctrl+Q (Windows) now run the full save-and-backup sequence before the app exits. Previously, ⌘Q skipped backups entirely.
• Three automatic triggers. Every 30 minutes while you're writing, after 5 minutes idle, and when you close the app.

Deleted project recovery

If your project folder is moved or deleted while Moondoggle is open, a recovery modal appears with three options:

• I've Restored It — checks again, and if the folder is back, saving resumes with no data loss.
• Save As New Project — writes everything in memory (prose, cards, boards, chat) to a new location. Images and attachments can't be recovered from memory, and the modal warns about this.
• Close Without Saving — closes the window.

Behind the scenes, Moondoggle no longer silently recreates a deleted project folder when autosave fires. A missing project folder is now a visible error.

DOCX image embedding

Inline images now export to Word documents.

• Images are sized to match the editor, so if you resized an image, the DOCX respects that width.
• Height is calculated from the image's real aspect ratio, read from the file header without decoding the full image.
• Images wider than the page are capped at the content width with the aspect ratio preserved.
• Missing or unreadable images are dropped with an export summary warning ("N image(s) could not be embedded").
• WebP and SVG are not embedded (Word handles WebP unreliably, and SVG needs a raster fallback).

Manuscript folder protection

The Manuscript folder can no longer be deleted from the context menu, the Delete key, or by dragging to Trash. It's used for export, word count, stats, and AI context, so deleting it could cause system-wide problems. You can still rename it and move documents in and out of it.

Paste font normalization

Pasting text from external apps (Safari, Notes, Word) no longer brings in unsupported fonts that render as Apple system font. Unsupported font-family values are stripped on paste, so the text matches your editor font. Supported fonts (the 16 in the font library) are preserved. Bold, italic, and other formatting survive the paste.

Header update button and What's New link

A small update indicator now appears in the title bar when a new version is available. Click it to install. A "What's New" link sits beside it after an update, opening the release notes.

Windows improvements

• Pop-out windows no longer flash white on dark themes.
• Pop-out menu bars removed on Windows. They were causing the parent window's menu bar to turn white. Ctrl+W still closes a pop-out.
• Card type dropdown caret enlarged for easier clicking.

Multiple projects, multiple windows

Every project now opens in its own window. Work with as many projects as you need, arranged however you like.

• Open multiple projects. File → Open (or double-click a .moondoggle launcher) opens a new window. Your current project stays exactly where it is.
• New Project opens a new window. ⌘⇧N creates a fresh project in its own window instead of replacing the one you're working on.
• Smart duplicate detection. Opening the same project twice focuses the existing window instead of creating a second one — even through symlinks or aliases.
• Independent windows. Each window has its own editor, board, chat, search index, and undo history. Closing one window never affects another.
• Recent projects. File → Open Recent shows your recent projects. If one is already open, it focuses that window.
• Restore on launch. Moondoggle remembers which projects were open and offers to reopen them when you launch.

Pop-out panels

Five panels can now be detached into their own windows:

• Card modal ↗ — keep a character sheet, location card, or plot point visible while you write the scene that references it. Card edits save continuously, so nothing is lost if you close the window.
• Chat ↗ — keep your AI conversation on a second monitor while the editor takes the full screen. Messages stream in real time, and you can send new queries from the pop-out.
• Chat History ↗ — browse, rename, and delete chat threads from a pop-out window. Switching a thread brings the project window forward.
• Snapshots ↗ — monitor your snapshots on a second screen. The list updates as you switch documents in the editor, and you can revert from the pop-out.
• Project Statistics ↗ — monitor your word count, session stats, and writing pace in a separate window while you write toward a target.

Edge-drag-to-pop-out for modals

Settings, Import Wizard, and Export Wizard can now be dragged to the edge of the screen to pop out into their own native window. Drag them to a second monitor to keep them visible while you work in the editor.

Multi-monitor support

Pop-out windows now open on the correct monitor — the one where you clicked ↗ or released the drag, not always the primary screen. The ↗ button centres the pop-out on its parent window's monitor.

Windows improvements

• Project folders show the Moondoggle icon in Explorer via a per-project desktop.ini.
• File → Open Project accepts .moondoggle files on Windows, so you can double-click the launcher inside a .moon folder instead of selecting the folder and clicking Select Folder.
• Atomic writes fall back gracefully on network shares that refuse rename-over-existing (e.g., Parallels shared folders).

Save failure visibility

If a document write fails (disk full, permissions, network issue) the header now turns red and shows the error instead of silently displaying "Saved ✓." This was a pre-existing gap that could hide data loss.

Web search for the AI assistant

Your writing assistant can now search the web to help with research questions — historical accuracy, scientific details, cultural context, name etymologies, and anything else your novel needs to get right.

• Two ways to search. Ask a research question naturally and the assistant will offer to search, or type @Web in the chat to search directly. The assistant blends web results with your manuscript context, so it knows both what you're writing and what the facts are.
• You're in control. The first time a search would help, a consent banner asks your permission. Choose "Allow in this chat" for this conversation, "Always allow" to skip the banner going forward, or "Don't search" to keep everything local. Change your mind anytime in Settings → AI Assistant.
• Your manuscript stays private. Search queries are derived from your question, not your manuscript. Character names, document titles, and chapter references are automatically stripped before anything leaves your machine.
• Cited sources. Web results appear as blue citation pills showing the source domain (e.g., weather.gov 🌐). Click to open the full page in your browser. Hover to see the exact URL.
• Works alongside manuscript citations. A single response can cite both your manuscript (gold pills) and web sources (blue pills), so you see exactly where every piece of information came from.

Font library

Moondoggle now ships with 16 fonts — 5 standard system fonts plus 11 bundled open-license families that render identically on every platform, fully offline:

• Body serifs: Lora, EB Garamond, Spectral, PT Serif, Libre Baskerville
• Sans-serif: Inter, Work Sans
• Monospace: JetBrains Mono
• Decorative: Caveat (handwriting), Playfair Display (elegant headings), Dancing Script (calligraphic)

The new font picker shows each font rendered in its own face, organized into three sections (Standards, Body, Decorative) with dividers. Board elements now default to Inter for a clean canvas look. All fonts are bundled — no internet needed.

Project opening and file management

• macOS: .moon project folders are now registered as native macOS bundles. Double-click a .moon folder in Finder to open it in Moondoggle — no need to navigate inside. Right-click → "Show Package Contents" if you want to see the files.
• Windows & Linux: a My Novel.moondoggle launcher file is created inside each project folder. Double-click it in Explorer or your file manager to open the project directly.
• Custom icon. Project files and launchers display Moondoggle's moon icon instead of the default folder/file icon.
• Better save dialog. New projects now show "Save Your Project" with a save panel instead of the generic "Select Folder" / "Open" dialog.
• Renamed index. The in-project file reference is now Table of Contents.html instead of Open Me — Your Book.html — clearer and less likely to be mistaken for a project launcher.

Word import improvements

• No more duplicate chapters. When a Word document has a page break before a chapter heading (standard manuscript formatting), the import wizard no longer creates two entries for the same chapter. Headings take precedence over page breaks, and nearby triggers are collapsed into a single split.
• Simplified import flow. The splits adjustment step has been removed from the import wizard. The auto-detected chapter splits are applied directly — if adjustments are needed, make them in Word and reimport.

About Moondoggle

A new About modal (Moondoggle → About Moondoggle) with credits, the Moondoggle wordmark, and version information. Replaces the plain native panel on macOS and is now consistent across all platforms.

Project Statistics

A new "Project Statistics" modal is available from the File menu, showing your entire manuscript at a glance: total word count, character count, document composition (longest/shortest chapter), writing activity (sessions, pace, most productive day), and AI usage — all scoped to the manuscript, with a separate "all writing" total that includes notes.

Scrivener import improvements

• Faster import preview. The import wizard now reads Scrivener projects in a lightweight first pass, building the tree and extracting short text snippets. Full document conversion happens one file at a time during the write phase. For large projects (80+ documents), the preview appears in under a second instead of 20+ seconds.
• Folder text preserved. Scrivener allows folders to contain their own text — a common pattern for section introductions or part headings. Previously this text was silently dropped. It now appears as the first document inside the folder, with the folder's title.
• Error messages instead of silent failures. If an import fails (corrupted project file, missing content, damaged XML), the wizard now shows a clear error message explaining what went wrong. Previously, certain failures could close the wizard without explanation.
• Progress bar during conversion. The wizard shows "Importing document N of M" with a live progress bar during the write phase, so you always know what's happening.
• Friendlier copy. "Parsing project" is now "Importing project" — less technical, more welcoming.
• Empty or damaged projects detected. Importing a Scrivener project with no documents now shows a helpful message suggesting the author verify the file in Scrivener, rather than showing an empty tree.

Compiled manuscript view

• Accurate word and document counts. The compiled manuscript view now shows the correct total word count and document count from the moment it opens. Previously, counts started low and climbed as you scrolled — only counting documents that had loaded into view.
• Seamless view by default. New projects now default to "seamless" compiled view (no visible separators between chapters). Authors who prefer separated view can still toggle it in the view menu.

Bug fixes

• Undo crash fixed. A rare crash when pressing ⌘Z — caused by the editor checking cursor position while the DOM selection was momentarily empty — has been fixed by updating the Yjs editor binding. The fix also prevents a related crash when a document reloads shorter than before.
• Connection label blur fixed. Text on board connection labels was blurry due to half-pixel positioning in WebKit. Labels are now positioned on whole pixels.

The Board Is Now a Freeform Canvas

The board has been rebuilt from the ground up. What was previously a card organizer is now a full visual workspace with shapes, sticky notes, text boxes, freeform arrows, and typed cards all on one canvas.

New element types:

• Shapes: rectangle, rounded rectangle, circle, triangle, diamond, star. Double-click to add text inside. Full formatting: fill, stroke (solid/dashed/dotted), opacity, corner rounding.
• Sticky notes: six paper colors (yellow, pink, blue, green, purple, orange), with auto-sizing text that scales as the note grows. Drop shadow and rounded corners, just like the real thing.
• Text boxes: frameless text on the canvas for labels, annotations, and section headers. Width is resizable; height follows the content automatically.

The primary toolbar sits centered above the canvas with shape picker, line picker, sticky, text, and eraser. Keyboard shortcuts too: S for select, H for shape, L for line, N for sticky, T for text, E for eraser.

Floating formatting menus appear above any selected element and allow you to change colors, fonts, stroke styles, opacity, and alignment without opening a panel. Cards, shapes, stickies, text boxes, and lines each get controls appropriate to their type.

Connections Reimagined

Lines are no longer just links between two cards. They're freeform drawing tools.

• Draw anywhere: Select the Line tool and drag on the canvas to place a free-floating arrow. Or drag from a card's edge node to connect two things directly.
• Four line types: Straight, elbow (right-angle routing), curve, and arc. Switch between them from the floating menu.
• Elbow lines slide and heal: Drag a segment to reshape an elbow. Slide it back into alignment and the extra bends collapse automatically. The line simplifies itself.
• Endpoints and caps: Arrows (three sizes), circles, diamonds, open arrows, or no endpoint at all. Mix and match on each end.
• Bend points: On straight and curved lines, you can drag a midpoint handle to add a bend. Double-click to remove it.
• Auto-routing: Elbows route around other elements on the board when you haven't manually shaped them.
• Line jumps: When two lines cross, one hops over the other so you can trace each path.
• Colors and weight: Every line can be colored from the theme palette or a custom color picker, with ten thickness steps from hairline to heavy.
• Format painter: Copy a line's style (color, weight, endpoints, dash pattern) and apply it to another line with one click.

Cards Are Smarter

• Proportional resize: Corner-drag to make a card bigger or smaller. The image and text scale together, never distorted. Three size presets (Small, Medium, Large) in the context menu.
• Context notes on the card face: At Medium and Large sizes, your board-specific notes appear right on the card, below the title and summary. Click them to jump into the card modal for full editing.
• Type conversion: Convert a shape into a sticky, a sticky into a card, a card into a shape. Text carries across. Connections re-point automatically. The library card stays intact when you convert a card to a shape.

Smart Eraser

Select the eraser tool and draw a stroke across the canvas. Anything the stroke crosses gets deleted: cards, shapes, stickies, connections, all in one gesture. Undo brings everything back.

Canvas Intelligence

• Alignment guides: Temporary guide lines appear when you drag an element into alignment with another's center or edge.
• Edge panning: Drag an element to the viewport edge and the canvas auto-pans.
• Collapse/expand cards: Switch cards to compact mode (title + icon only) to see the big picture. Expand to see details.
• Double-click quick-create: Double-click empty canvas for a floating palette to place any element type.
• Z-order controls: Bring to Front, Send to Back, Forward, Backward. Works across cards and elements together.
• Contextual connection labels: When connecting two typed cards, the label suggests relationship types (ally, rival, family for Character→Character; lives, travels to for Character→Location).

Board Data Safety

Three new protections for your board data:

• Pre-migration snapshots: Before any internal format upgrade, the original board file is preserved as a timestamped copy. If something goes wrong, the original is intact.
• Write-hash verification: Every board save records a fingerprint. On the next open, if the file changed outside Moondoggle (cloud sync conflict, manual edit), you're told.
• Empty-board write guard: If a board fails to load, Moondoggle creates a recovery board with a new name instead of overwriting your file. And if you see an empty board, a notice tells you what happened.
• Clear Board: A deliberate "delete everything" action so you can intentionally empty a board without it being restored on reload.

Card Library Fixes

• Move to Trash works from the card library context menu.
• Drag to Trash works by dragging cards onto the Trash node.
• Delete permanently works from the Trash context menu.
• Modal stack cleanup so deleting a card no longer leaves an invisible modal entry that blocks future card opens.

Editor Fixes

• Cursor position is preserved correctly after certain formatting operations.
• Newline handling improved in edge cases.
• Sticky note drop shadows and rounded corners restored (were inadvertently removed during a CSS refactor).

Creative Provenance

Moondoggle now tracks how you use its AI assistant and can generate a signed provenance report you can share with agents, publishers, or editors. No other writing tool offers this.

What the report shows:

• A certification statement: how many AI interactions occurred and whether any AI-generated text was pasted into the manuscript
• AI usage breakdown by category (feedback, research, brainstorming, analysis) and by mode (Efficient, Balanced, Deep)
• A writing timeline heat map spanning your entire project, visible at a glance
• Cryptographic signing so the report can't be altered after generation

What the report does NOT show: what you typed, what the AI said, or which specific passages the AI commented on. It provides information on what Moondoggle observed about your workflow, but it does NOT provide a verdict on authorship.

An attestation checkbox on every export. Before generating a PDF or JSON, you confirm that the information is accurate and that no other AI-generated content beyond what's reflected was used.

A legal disclaimer accompanies every report, stating that it reflects automated observations, not a legal certification. It also states that the cryptographic signature proves the document hasn't been tampered with, not that the underlying data is true.

Third-Party Verification is coming. The report includes a stub for independent AI detection and plagiarism scanning powered by Pangram. Pricing is calculated from your word count. The purchase flow will go live once our cloud backend launches.

Find it under File → Generate Provenance Report, in the Export Wizard under "Other Documents," or in Settings → General.

A Better First Launch

New users now land straight in the editor with a tutorial and a ready-to-explore demo project. The document tree is fully populated (Manuscript, Notes, Research, a sample card, a sample board) so the app looks ready to go from the moment it opens. Name and save your project when you're ready with the Project Setup modal that appears after the tutorial.

System menu items (File, Edit, View) are grayed out until a project is saved. This applies both during the first-launch flow and on the launch screen for returning users. This is to ensure nothing ever looks "broken" when there's no project to act on.

Manuscript Root Shows the Whole Book

Clicking the Manuscript root in your document tree now shows your entire manuscript compiled into one scrollable view. The first chapter leads and the compiled-view toggle is greyed out because it's always on for the root. Works in both panes in split screen.

Import Improvements

• No more surprise indents. The default first-line indent is now zero. If your original document had indents, they're preserved on import. If it didn't, Moondoggle won't automatically add them (unless you set auto-indent in the Settings).
• Line breaks preserved from Word. Soft line breaks (Shift+Enter) and blank paragraphs in .docx files are now faithfully imported instead of being collapsed into continuous text.

Editor and UI Fixes

• Disabled buttons no longer show hover styles. Greyed-out buttons across the app now correctly stay flat when you hover or click them.
• WKWebView suspension recovery. If macOS suspends the app in the background for an extended period, Moondoggle now flushes all pending writes before the suspension takes effect, so a restart after a long background period loses nothing.
• Default author carries forward. The author name you enter for your first project is saved as your default, so you don't need to retype it when creating a second project.

Windows and Linux

Moondoggle is now available on Windows and Mac. Same file format, same projects, no conversion. A manuscript is a folder of ordinary files on every platform. Windows gets a signed installer, a Start Menu entry, and the native right-click menu with your system's own spelling suggestions.

Automatic Updates

Moondoggle keeps itself current. New versions are offered on launch, download with a progress bar, and install without you fetching anything. Your work is saved continuously, so a restart mid-session doesn't impact your writing.

Release Notes in the App

After each update, a short summary of what changed appears once. It never reappears for a version you have already seen.

Automatic Backups

Moondoggle takes a full copy of your project every 30 minutes, whenever you stop writing for five minutes, and when you close the project. It will skip the copy if nothing changed, so you don't collect identical archives. Backups are ordinary .zip files: you can open one without Moondoggle and read your work straight out of it.

Clearer Answers When Something Goes Wrong

If a save fails, the warning names the likely cause (most often a cloud-sync client or an antivirus scanner holding the file open for a moment, which you can fix in seconds once you know). It used to say "check disk space," which was almost always the wrong advice.

Your Revision History Is Safer

Found and fixed a rare fault where two documents saving in the very same instant could damage one document's stored revision history. The text of your work was never at risk (it is written separately and was always intact) but the history behind it could be.

Quitting Is Quicker

Building a backup archive no longer holds up the rest of the app, so closing a large project with backups should be smooth.

Custom Colour Picker for Text and Highlighting

Sixteen text colors and sixteen highlight colors, each measured to stay legible against every one of the ten themes. "Automatic" is the important one: it removes the color rather than replacing it, so the text follows your theme. Highlighted text is always drawn in dark ink, so a highlight reads correctly in any theme.

A First-Run Welcome

A one-time screen covering the Terms, Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy before you start writing, followed by the tutorial and project setup.

A Privacy Section in Settings

What is collected, what is not, and a link to the full policy. During the open beta, anonymous usage data and crash reports are required and the toggle is fixed on; you will be able to opt out when the full version releases. We never collect your prose, your document titles, your file paths, or anything you ask the AI.

A Proper App Icon

Sized to each platform's guidelines, so Moondoggle sits correctly in the Dock, the taskbar, and the Start Menu.