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Create a timeline and decide about a calendar
Last updated September 9, 2026 · 7 min read
In one line: create your first timeline and decide whether it uses a calendar — including one you invent yourself.
How do you want to manage time in this book?
Free ordering
- No dates. Just drag events into order; write time however you like (“three years later”, “on the eve of war”).
- Best for: stories that keep time loose and unbound by dates
Use a calendar
- Give your story a calendar — the real-world one, or one built for your world. Dated events sort themselves, and you can browse your world month by month.
- Best for: epics, parallel storylines, stories that track ages and schedules
And the line underneath both: you can change your mind anytime — enabling or disabling the calendar never harms your events or their order.
Create a .timeline file
- In the Explorer, right-click the folder you want it in.
- The first level of that menu holds only manuscripts, scripts, references and folders — open More.
- Choose New Timeline and name it. The extension is
.timeline.
Chapters/ Chapter 01 - The Copyist Girl.md Characters/ Shen Yan.md Timeline/ Main Timeline.timeline
That is how Ink Tide is arranged: a Timeline folder holding one Main Timeline.timeline. A book can hold several — one for the main thread, one for a subplot, one you keep beside another book for comparison. They are just more files.
First open: one decision
A newly created file is empty, and the first time you open it the whole pane asks one question: How do you want to manage time in this book?
Free ordering. No dates. Drag events into order and write time however you like ("three years later", "on the eve of war"). Best for stories that keep time deliberately loose.
Use a calendar. Give the story a calendar — the real-world one, or one built for your world. Dated events sort themselves, and you get a calendar view to browse month by month. Best for epics, parallel threads, and stories that have to keep ages and schedules straight.
The small line underneath is the point of the whole design: you can change your mind anytime — enabling or disabling the calendar never harms your events or their order. That is not reassurance, it is a guarantee. Sort position and calendar are separate things, so no amount of calendar editing can move an event.
Choose Free ordering and you land straight on the timeline, ready for your first event. Choose Use a calendar and the calendar wizard opens.
The wizard: pick a starting point
Step one offers three:
| Starting point | What you get |
|---|---|
| Real-world Gregorian | 12 months, 7-day weeks, real month lengths (31 / 28 / 31 …). For a modern or historical setting, ready as-is |
| Fantasy template: Four Seasons | 4 months × 30 days, 10-day weeks called Tendays, months named First Moon / Summer Moon / Autumn Moon / Winter Moon. A 30-second start you then reshape |
| Blank custom | 1 month × 30 days, 7-day weeks. From scratch |
Step two is the tuning panel — the same one you get later from the toolbar — and Finish and start commits it. Back returns you to the three cards. When the wizard closes you land on the calendar view.
What a calendar is made of
- Calendar name — display only, editable anytime.
- Era name — leave it blank and a year reads "3"; fill it in and it reads "Chengwen 3".
- Starting year — the origin of this calendar.
- Days per week — this decides how many columns the calendar view has. A ten-day week gives you a ten-column grid.
- Months — one row each, name and length, added and removed freely (at least one has to remain).
Ink Tide runs on the Chengwen Calendar: era name Chengwen, starting year 1, 7-day weeks, and 12 months of exactly 30 days each — a 360-day year. The months are named the way that world names them: Moon 1 through Moon 12. That is the real use of a custom calendar. It does not have to look like the Gregorian one.
Changing it later
In calendar mode the toolbar has a Calendar button that opens the settings panel. A line sits permanently at the top of it: the calendar is only a display format — change or disable it anytime; your events and their order are never harmed.
At the bottom of the panel is Disable calendar (events and order stay intact). Disabling only switches the mode off. The calendar definition stays, and so does every event's stored date, so enabling it again brings everything back exactly as it was — you are not re-entering anything.
In free mode that toolbar button reads Enable calendar instead. If you have set one up before, it comes back as it was; only a timeline that never had one opens the wizard.
Changing a month's length never moves an event. But if a date now falls outside the new length — you shortened Moon 3 to 28 days and something sits on the 30th — that event is flagged in red in its edit window, with two one-click repairs: Snap to a valid date pulls it back to the last legal day of that month, or Extend the month to 30 days stretches the calendar so it fits again. Either is fine; pick whichever matches what you meant.
Letting the AI set the calendar
Setting the calendar is one of the AI's five timeline tools. On an empty timeline it is the only one accepted, because without a calendar there is nowhere for a date to land.
"Build me a calendar with four months of thirty days" is a fair thing to ask. What comes back is a preview; it lands when you accept it. This tool never touches entries — it writes the mode and the calendar definition and nothing else, which is exactly why switching a calendar on and off costs you no data.
A few things worth knowing
- A book can hold several timelines, each with its own calendar. They do not affect one another.
- If you edited that JSON with another tool and broke it, opening it shows "This timeline file could not be read" and Slima will not overwrite it. Restore it from version history.
- Phones can do all of this, gate and wizard included — the wizard opens as a bottom sheet there.
Related
Open the app and do this with your own book. Free to start, no credit card.