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Ask the AI to rework a scene, and review what it did
Last updated September 9, 2026 · 9 min read
In one line: how to ask the AI to change one scene — how to phrase it, where the change appears, where Accept and Skip live, and what it will not touch.
Two places to ask
Right-click the line — the shortest route. The menu carries an AI Actions group; open it and there are six: Polish, Expand, Rewrite, Condense, Comment, Inspire. Pick one and an editable prompt box appears with a line of context already filled in at the top: which scene this is, what kind of element, and that element's id. Add what you actually want after it and send.
That context line isn't decoration. Because it carries the element id, the AI's answer lands back on that same line as a pending change. Without it the AI can only hand you prose that you then have to paste in yourself.
The same menu also has Add to Chat, which only drops that line's text into the chat input as context — it runs nothing.
Right-click → AI Actions, opened
- AI Actions
6- Polish
- Expand
- Rewrite
- Condense
- Comment
- Inspire
- Add to Chat
- Team — Add Comment · Suggest Edit
- Add note
4(still folded)
The group row is folded by default and the number is how many items are inside. Above it sit copy / cut / paste / select all and the whole scene block — see splitting, merging, inserting and reordering. A long-press on the same line on a phone gives only Copy, Select All, Add Comment and Suggest Edit; this block is not there.
The AI Chat panel — just say it. "Scene 3 drags; cut Pei Zhao's three lines down to two" is a request it understands, and it picks the tools itself.
The right-click AI Actions group is desktop only for now. Long-pressing a line on a phone gives you copy, select and comment. You can still make the request from the AI Chat panel on a phone, and you can still review and accept there — you just don't get the six quick actions.
The six things it can change
| What you want | What it actually calls |
|---|---|
| Add a scene (INT/EXT, location, time of day, note) | Add scene. It arrives with one blank action line for you to continue |
| Change a scene heading | Change heading (any of the four fields, or just one) |
| Delete a whole scene | Remove scene, and every line in it |
| Add a line after another line | Add element (dialogue / action / character / parenthetical / transition / shot) |
| Change a line's text | Update element |
| Delete a line | Remove element |
One call can carry several of these, so "add a scene and put three lines of dialogue in it" is one round trip, not four. A batch is all or nothing: if one operation in it fails, none of them apply — you never get a half-done state.
What it will not touch
It cannot change an element's type. To turn an action line into dialogue it has to delete the line and add a new one — that's exactly what the official guidance tells it to do. You can do it in a second with Ctrl+3.
The Taiwan / Hollywood format setting: no. "Convert this episode to Hollywood" isn't something it can do. That toggle sits on the right of the toolbar and it's yours.
The four fields at the top of the page (title, episode number, subtitle, writer) and the target minutes: no.
Scene numbers, sort order, internal ids, word counts, the runtime estimate: all computed by the app. It can't set them, and if it tries the value is ignored.
Moving a scene: there is no tool for it. "Move scene 4 to the front" is out of reach — drag it in board view, or use insert/merge from the line's right-click menu.
Overwriting the file, replacing part of it, deleting it: refused outright for .script — not "discouraged". So "the AI overwrote my screenplay" is not a thing that can happen here.
It can create an empty screenplay file for you (identical to the one right-click → New Script produces), but any content it supplies with that is ignored — everything after that goes through the six tools above. So "make me an empty episode 13 and put three scene headings in it" is a workable request.
Where the change shows up
Not in the chat. The chat panel gives you a one-line summary and a status badge; the Accept button lives on the screenplay itself.
And until you press Accept, not one byte of the file has changed. Read that file now — or ask the AI to read it again — and you get the old content.
| Change | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| A line added | Green background, a colour stripe down the left, an "Added" chip |
| A line changed | Amber; the old line struck through and faded above, the new one underneath |
| A line removed | Red, content struck through |
| A whole scene added | One green block with "New scene" on its header row |
| A heading changed | The chip reads it out: "Heading → INT. YOU'AN SCRIPTORIUM - NIGHT" |
Those lines are drawn by the real screenplay layout components, so the indentation and centring you see are exactly what you get after accepting.
Accept and Skip
Every pending change carries the same pair: Accept, Skip.
A small pill floats at the top right reading "N pending", with previous/next and one Accept all in this file. With nothing pending, the pill doesn't exist.
That N counts the AI's calls, not the marks on screen. One batch may light up four places, but they belong to the same call — press Accept on any one of them and all four land together. If you want them separately, tell the AI to change one thing at a time.
"Accept all in this file" walks through them one at a time rather than as a single transaction: it re-checks each one against the live file and quietly skips anything that has already gone stale.
What "Outdated" means
The moment you accept, Slima re-runs that tool against the file as it stands right now — it does not apply a frozen snapshot.
That rule exists for your benefit: you can keep working on the scene while changes are pending. Your edits either leave the AI's proposal still applicable, or they make it Outdated — they never get silently overwritten by it.
An outdated change wears an "Outdated" badge and loses its Accept button; only Skip remains. If even its anchor is gone (you deleted that line outright), it's collected into a small list, again skip-only.
Phrasing that gets you what you wanted
Requests that work have one thing in common: they can point at a place.
- "Pei Zhao's three lines in scene 3 are too literary — make them sound like him."
- "Add a scene after scene 5: EXT. SALT BRIDGE NIGHT MARKET - NIGHT."
- "Put a fade out at the end of this scene."
- Right-click a line and choose Condense — the shortest route, because the place has already been pointed at for you.
Requests that don't work:
- "Convert this episode to Hollywood format." (the format isn't its to set)
- "Move scene 4 to the front." (no move tool)
- "Rewrite the whole thing." (whole-file writes are blocked)
The AI sees at most 40 lines per scene. Anything past that is marked as omitted, and the official guidance tells it to say so rather than guess. So when a scene runs long, either split it first (right-click the line → Split Scene) or paste the specific lines into your request.
When not to use it
- Don't start another round while a pile of changes is still pending. The system can work out the anchors; you won't be able to tell which mark came from which call.
- Don't use it for moving things around or changing line types. Both take you a second and cost it a detour.
- Don't expect it to read what you didn't give it. It reads a summary of this screenplay file. If a character's profile lives in a
.md, mention that file in the chat if you want it read too.
Related
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