A story bible for writers of long, interconnected fiction.
Wolfden keeps the lore of your series in one place: characters, settings, timelines, plot threads, outlines, and every invented thing a world needs (star systems, factions, ships, spells). Every fact knows where in the story it becomes true, so you can always ask "what's canon as of the end of Book 2?"
Status: early. You can use Wolfden for real now, if you don't mind rough edges.
wolfden serveopens a web app in your browser for reading and editing your den, with canon as of any point in the story, history, checkpoints, and freezing a finished book. The command line lints a den for continuity (wolfden check), and an MCP server lets AI assistants read and write your notes. There's no installer yet: you build it from source (see Try it). Ideas and feedback are welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Writing a series means tracking hundreds of facts across books, and keeping them consistent. General-purpose note apps and wikis don't know what a series is, what order the books go in, or that a character's eye color was set in Book 1, chapter 3. Wolfden is built around that.
Novelists and other writers of long fiction who keep serious notes: series bibles, timelines, plot threads, worldbuilding. You shouldn't have to be technical to use it.
- Where it's headed: no git or command line needed at all, an installer, and optional backup to a private remote such as GitHub, with guided setup.
- Where it is today: early. A local web app (
wolfden serve) and a command-line tool both work. History, checkpoints, and freezing a book are already buttons, with git doing the work underneath. You can keep editing the markdown files in Obsidian or VS Code side by side with the app. To see what a den looks like, browse the Dracula sample, or the invented Starfall sample, which comes with version history.
You need the .NET 10 SDK. Clone the repo, then from its root:
dotnet run --project src/Wolfden.Cli -- check samples/dracula
dotnet run --project src/Wolfden.Cli -- query --den samples/dracula --at dracula:9 --briefThe first command checks the sample den and should find nothing wrong. The second lists everything a reader knows by chapter 9 of Dracula. To set up a den of your own, follow the recommended order. The commands are described in design.md §7. To connect Claude or another AI assistant, see Connecting MCP clients. For choosing whether a note goes in the universe, a series, or a book, see Where to file things. For practical tips, such as where to keep images and how to set up Obsidian, see Using Wolfden.
- Story hierarchy: Author Identity → Universe → Series (ordered) → Book. Notes live at the level they belong to. A point-in-story view shows everything the reader has met so far, wherever it's filed, and can be narrowed to one series or book.
- Canon over time: facts are tagged with where they enter canon (book and chapter), which gives point-in-story views for continuity checks and spoiler-safe reference.
- Typed entities: Character, Location, Faction, and so on, each with a consistent structure plus your own custom sections. Bundles of types for a genre come as packs (space opera, epic fantasy, and so on).
- Plain markdown files: your notes are markdown files with YAML frontmatter in a folder you control. Keep it in a git repository, local or pushed to a private remote, and version history comes from git. Nothing locks you in. SQLite is used only as a rebuildable index for search, links, and queries.
- AI-native: a built-in MCP server lets AI assistants query canon and update notes, working from structured data rather than pasted files.
- Sample universes: ready-made datasets to explore, in the spirit of Northwind and AdventureWorks. One is based on a public-domain classic and one is an invented multi-book series.
- ASP.NET Core (.NET 10), with EF Core and SQLite for the index
- React and TypeScript (Vite), with TanStack Query
- Docker for self-hosting (later)
Code: MIT. The built-in packs in packs/ (types and
templates): MIT-0. Sample datasets in samples/,
and the older versions of a sample in scripts/starfall-history/versions/:
CC-BY-4.0.
Your writing is yours. Wolfden's licenses cover Wolfden itself. They place no conditions on the notes, manuscripts, or anything else you create with it, including content copied from its built-in templates.
Created by Gavin Wolfe.