Editorialist

Editorialist

by Eric Rhys Taylor

What it does

Editorialist turns outside feedback into a controlled revision workflow inside Obsidian. It imports review batches from human editors, beta readers, or AI 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.

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.
• Editorialisms are separate structural checklist files under Editorialist/<Book>/; use them for broader guidance that spans scenes or the whole manuscript.
• Maintenance actions can clean review blocks or reset history, and bulk actions ask for confirmation.

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.
• Review pending edits in active book — starts the pending-edits review flow across the active book.
• 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.

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.