Every feature, and how to make the most of it. New here? Start at the top. Looking for something specific? Use the menu.
A world is your project: a self-contained setting with its own Lexicon, stories, assets, and members. Create one from My Worlds, give it a name and a visibility (private, unlisted, or public), and you land on the world dashboard.
The world home page is a dashboard. Across the top sit word, page, member, and thread counts. Below is a recent-activity feed showing who edited what, new threads, new replies, and new members, so collaborators always know what changed. The left sidebar switches between Search, Lexicon, Stories, The Web, Cast, Boards, Sessions, Assets, Notifications, and Settings.
On My Worlds, each world appears as a card showing its visibility and total word count. The three-dot menu on a card lets you edit or delete that world.
The first time you reach My Worlds, a short welcome tour walks you through creating your first world and finding your way around, highlighting each control as it goes. You can leave it at any time, and replay it whenever you like from your avatar menu → Settings → Replay welcome tour.
Sign up and sign in with an email and password, or with your Google account. If you use Google with the same email as an existing account, the two are linked automatically. Sign-in and registration are protected by a human-verification check to keep out bots. New members receive a welcome email.
The Lexicon is a tree of pages you can nest under folders. Create pages, folders, and maps from the + New control in the Lexicon sidebar. Each page has an icon you can change, an optional banner image across the top, and can be split into multiple tabs (for example a public description and private GM notes). Clicking Lexicon in the sidebar always opens the first page in the tree directly.
To set or change a page's cover image, hover over an existing banner and click Change cover, or click the + Cover image button that appears above the title when no banner is set. The picker lets you upload a new image or choose one already in your world's asset gallery. You can remove the cover from the same picker at any time.
When you open a fresh, empty page, a template picker offers starter layouts for common page types. Pick one to get a head start, or dismiss it to write on a blank page.
Link pages together by typing @ while editing and choosing a page. Click a Lexicon link to jump to the page it references (Ctrl or Cmd click opens it in a new tab), and hover over one to see a quick preview of that page. Linked pages also appear in the Mentioned in backlinks panel on the target page, so your world stays interconnected automatically.
Auto-link does the linking for you. The Auto-link button in a page header scans your prose for any text that matches another page's title (whole words only, not case sensitive) and proposes a link to that page. It works on regular pages and on manuscripts, where it scans every chapter, so a manuscript can link back to the lexicon pages it mentions. Choose whether to scan just the current page or the entire lexicon, and whether to link only the first mention on each page or every mention. You then see the full list of suggested links, each grouped by page (and chapter) with a snippet of surrounding text, and you can uncheck any you do not want before applying. Text that is already linked, page titles inside headings, and a page linking to itself are all left alone.
Folders can hold an intro of their own: open a folder page and write a blurb at the top to describe what it contains. The list of pages inside the folder appears below it under Contents.
Any page or folder can be marked GM-only using the padlock button in the Lexicon toolbar. Hidden pages disappear from the sidebar and are blocked at the server for players and guests. Hiding a folder hides the entire subtree inside it. See GM secrets & visibility for the full system.
Pages use a rich editor that saves automatically as you type. The fastest way to add structure is the slash menu. Type / on a new line and a menu of blocks appears. Keep typing to filter, use the arrow keys to move, and press Enter to insert.
/ and you'll see:The toolbar also offers bold, italic, and text color, and its callout button lets you pick the callout style (info, warning, danger, success, or tip). The Secret block is built for GMs: keep hidden plot notes on the same page as public lore. Callouts, collapsibles, and columns can be nested to build rich, scannable pages.
On a phone these panels collapse into tappable headers so the page body stays the focus; tap a header to expand the panel you want.
Every page keeps a revision history. Snapshots are taken automatically as you edit, at most one every few minutes so the list stays clean. Open History on a page to see who changed it and when, and restore any earlier version with one click. Restoring is itself saved, so you can never lose work.
Each page tracks its word count. Click the word count to set a word goal; a progress bar fills as you write, and reaching a goal of 100 or more words earns XP. World cards in My Worlds show the combined word count of all their pages.
Create a map page and set an image as its background, then drop pins on it. Each pin can carry a label, a description, a type, a color, and a link to a Lexicon page. Outside edit mode, clicking a pin takes you straight to that location's lore; pins can also point to other maps, letting you nest a continent down to a city.
Press Edit pins to make changes. In edit mode, click the map to add a pin and drag any pin to reposition it. Each pin sits inside a colored ring you can recolor in the pin dialog (pick a preset, the world accent, or a custom color) so different kinds of places stand out. Use the zoom controls (or Ctrl and the scroll wheel) to move between an overview and fine detail.
WanderingCodex has a layered visibility system that lets GMs keep hidden notes, plot hooks, and NPC secrets on the same pages as player-facing lore, without ever leaking them. Hidden content is stripped on the server before it reaches a player's browser.
/secret) hides a section of inline content on an otherwise public page. Write GM notes alongside player lore on the same document; only editors and GM-tier viewers see the block.Two controls in world Settings determine which members see GM-only content:
Editors can preview the world exactly as a player would see it by clicking the View as player eye button in the top toolbar. An amber banner confirms you are in preview; all secrets are stripped, editing is disabled, and the document tree shows only public pages. Click the banner to return to editor mode. This works on any page, including maps, so you can verify pin visibility without switching accounts.
The Web (the relationship map) maps how the pages in your world connect. Every node is a Lexicon page (a character, faction, location, or anything else), and every line is a connection you define between two pages. It is an interactive, force-directed canvas: drag nodes to arrange them, scroll to zoom, drag the background to pan, and use Fit to center the view. Click a node to highlight just its connections; click a line to open its detail panel.
Each connection has a type, shown by color, so the shape of your world reads at a glance:
@ to link Lexicon pages inside the description. It autosaves as you write.The legend at the bottom left doubles as a filter: click a type to hide or show it. Editing connections is limited to moderators and above; everyone with access to The Web section can view it.
The Cast tab is a world's character roster: a shared list of the characters taking part, who plays each one, and a link straight to their bio. Characters come from your personas, so the same character can appear across every world you join.
Every world has an Assets tab: a gallery of images and files you upload once and reuse anywhere. Uploaded images can become page banners, map backgrounds, and character art. Keeping your artwork and reference files in one place means you are never re-uploading the same image twice.
The Search tab in a world finds matches across your Lexicon pages by title and content. Results update as you type and show a snippet with a link straight to the page. Search is scoped to the world you are in, so you only see results that belong to that setting.
Stories are threaded discussions and collaborative fiction, organized into Chapters (the Boards section organizes its threads into Categories the same way). Threads come in four types: discussion, in-character (play-by-post), out-of-character, and announcement. Posts use the same rich formatting as the Lexicon and can @-link Lexicon pages. Threads can be pinned to the top of a chapter, and locked to stop new replies.
@-mentioned in a story show those threads in their Appears in panel, tying your fiction back to your lore.A persona is a character you speak as in Stories, separate from your account. Create and manage personas from your account menu. Each persona has a name and an avatar.
When you write a reply, a Post as selector lets you choose yourself or any of your personas. Posting in character shows the character's name and avatar on the post, with a quiet note that it is played by you.
Each persona has a character sheet: upload character art and write a full bio using the same rich editor as Lexicon pages. In a thread, tap a character's name to open their sheet as an overlay without leaving the conversation.
Creating and writing earns XP, shown as a level and progress bar in the nav bar and account menu. It is a gentle nudge to keep building, not a competition.
Writing streaks reward consistency. Save something on consecutive days and your streak grows, with a bonus that climbs to its cap at a week. Streak days roll over at your local midnight (your browser's timezone is detected automatically). A 🔥 streak count appears in your account menu once you are on a roll.
You progress through a series of titles, and each title has ten tiers (Wanderer 1 through Wanderer 10, then on to Scribe, and so on). Each tier costs more XP than the last, so later titles are a longer journey. After Legend 10 the rank becomes Eternal and keeps climbing without limit.
Open the Level & progress tab in your account settings for a full breakdown: your current title and tier, how much XP each activity has earned you, your writing streaks, and the title ladder.
The bell in the nav bar shows an unread count and a dropdown of recent activity. It checks for new items periodically, so you do not need to refresh. Each notification links to whatever triggered it, and you can mark a single one or all of them as read.
You get an in-app notification when:
Controlling what you receive. The Notifications tab in Account Settings lets you set account-wide defaults for each section: Stories, Boards, Lexicon, and Sessions. Each world also has a Notifications page in the sidebar (the bell icon) where you can override those defaults just for that world, setting any section to Default, On, or Off.
Email notifications respect the same per-section and per-world controls. Account and invitation emails are always sent. Reply emails require the "Email me when someone replies to a thread I follow" toggle to be on in Account Settings. All other notification emails follow your section preferences.
Every world uses a tiered role system. Each role inherits everything the role below it can do and adds more. This lets you run anything from an open public Lexicon to a tightly gated campaign where players see only what you choose.
Owners and admins control who can see each part of a world. In world Settings, the Section visibility panel sets a minimum role for every section: Lexicon, Stories, Boards, Sessions, The Web, Cast, Assets, and Search. Set a section to Guest to make it public, or raise it as high as Admin to hide it from everyone but your staff. You could, for example, expose the Lexicon to the public while keeping Stories and Boards limited to Players and above. Sections a member cannot reach simply do not appear in their sidebar.
The Minimum role to see secrets setting in world Settings controls which roles can view GM-only pages, properties, and map pins. The default is Moderator: any member at Moderator or above sees all hidden content. Raise it to Admin for tighter control, or lower it to Player for lighter games. Members added to the individual secrets allowlist always see GM content, regardless of their role. See GM secrets & visibility for details.
.md file. Lexicon links are preserved as [[Page Title]] references; all headings, lists, tables, callouts, and code blocks convert cleanly..md file, separated by horizontal rules. Useful for backups or migrating to another tool./read/[world-id]. Visitors need no account. The reader shows a collapsible document tree on the left, a minimal top bar with the world name, and your content in full. GM Secret blocks are hidden from the reader. Find the shareable link in world Settings under Public Reader.Ready to build? Jump back into your worlds.
My Worlds