Editorialist

Editorialist

by Eric Rhys Taylor

What it does

Editorialist turns outside feedback into a controlled revision workflow inside Obsidian. Feedback arrives as review batches in Editorialist's format, packaged by an AI: either the AI's own review, or a human editor's or beta reader's notes that an AI has converted. Editorialist imports each batch into the scene notes you are already editing, matches suggestions conservatively against note content, and lets you accept, reject, rewrite, defer, or archive each change. Long-form editorial agendas become Editorialisms, checklists pinned to the passages they concern, and a revision plan schedules all of it, along with your own pending edits, against your deadline while tracking progress across the whole book.

How it works

• Copy the formatting instructions from the review launcher, send them with the prose or notes you want reviewed, then copy the formatted response back into Editorialist.
• A review batch is the AI-formatted response: line edits, cuts, moves, condenses, expands, and memos.
• Importing a batch appends review blocks to the bottom of the targeted scene notes. Nothing is applied to the prose until you act on a suggestion.
• The Review Panel walks those suggestions scene by scene and records contributor stats, revision history, and per-scene progress as you finish.
• When a suggestion bears on other scenes, the selected suggestion card shows them under Across scenes; Open beside opens that scene in a side pane without losing your place.
• Editorialisms are separate structural checklist files under Editorialist/<Book>/; use them for broader guidance that spans scenes or the whole manuscript. A directive can carry anchors — verbatim fragments pinning it to the passages it is actually about, so a manuscript-wide note becomes a short route through the prose instead of a hunt. Anchors are jump targets only; nothing is ever applied for you.
• A directive that asks for a choice shows Decision needed: record the answer once with Decide, or write your own question with Ask a question…. Each Editorialism's Hand off to AI card copies one prompt covering every unfinished directive you have decided or questioned; the edits and answers come back through Import as a review batch.
• An editorial delivery groups one editor's handoff (its batches and Editorialism files, received date, and return deadline) so you can track and plan it as a unit.
• The revision plan puts batches, directives, and pending edits in one queue against your deadline and daily capacity. Auto-plan spreads every open item in the book across your working days, and the progress card counts finished work across the whole book, planned or not.
• Maintenance actions can clean review blocks or reset history, and bulk actions ask for confirmation.

How feedback gets in

Editorialist does not write feedback and never calls an AI itself. Every review batch reaches it in Editorialist's review format, and packaging feedback into that format is an AI's job:

1. Copy the formatting instructions from the review launcher.
2. Give them to the AI you choose, along with the scenes to review, or along with a human editor's or beta reader's notes for the AI to convert.
3. Paste the AI's formatted reply back into Editorialist's import.

It's a format, and any AI you choose can follow it. Editorialist makes no network calls and holds no API keys.

From there, Editorialist runs the workflow: it matches each suggestion to its passage, walks you through accepting, rejecting, or rewriting them scene by scene, tracks editorialism directives and your decisions, and schedules the work against your deadline.

Commands

• Open review launcher — opens the launcher modal to import a review batch or start pending-edits review.
• Open review panel — opens the review side panel for the active note.
• Find selection across scenes — lists every paragraph in the active book containing the selected phrase, grouped by scene, each openable beside the current one. Also available from the editor right-click menu when text is selected.
• Open editorialism panel — opens the Editorialisms panel for structural guidance documents.
• Open revision plan — orders mixed revision work and plans author estimates against daily capacity and a deadline.
• Open pending edits panel — opens the Pending edits panel for author notes and Inquiry follow-ups.
• Review pending edits in active book — starts the pending-edits review flow across the active book.
• End current round — removes the current batch or all remaining batches in the book, keeping manuscript edits and decision counts. Unfinished feedback is marked ended early; no archive is created.
• Rescan review blocks for cleanup — re-scans scene notes for review blocks ready to be cleaned.
• Backup selection to cut file — copies the selected text into the scene's cut file without changing the manuscript. Also available from the editor right-click menu when text is selected.
• Insert author query — drops a %%query: …%% marker into the scene at the cursor (hidden in reading view), so your next review — your editor's or an AI's — answers it in a QUERY block. Markers written as %%ai: …%% before 2.0.1 still work. Also available from the editor right-click menu.
• Anchor selection to editorialism directive — pins the selected passage to an Editorialism directive so you can jump straight back to it later. Also available from the editor right-click menu.
• Go to next unprocessed anchor — opens the next anchored passage in the active Editorialism, across scenes.
• Mark anchor processed and go to next — records the current anchored passage as handled and advances.

Editorialist ships no default hotkeys. Assign your own from Obsidian's hotkey settings.

License

Editorialist Source-Available Non-Commercial License. Free for personal, educational, and professional creative work — including manuscripts and other commercial creative output produced with the plugin. Commercial use of the software itself, redistribution, and forks for public distribution require written permission. See LICENSE and NOTICE for full terms.