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The notes panel: what you keep beside the manuscript
Last updated September 9, 2026 · 7 min read
In one line: what the notes panel holds, how a note differs from a comment, and where each note lives so you can find it again.
A note is addressed to you
The manuscript is for the reader. A comment is so somebody else can answer you. A note is for you, next month.
Notes live in a panel beside the file rather than inside it. Writing one never touches a sentence of your prose, never moves your word count, and never shows up for someone you send a share link to. "This image gets used once in chapter 6 and has to come back reversed in chapter 12" belongs in a note — put it in the manuscript and it becomes a line of narration nobody asked for.
Two ways in: the sticky-note icon on the activity bar, or Ctrl + Shift + N (⌘ + Shift + N on a Mac).
Notes and comments
Comments
- Anchored to a passage of text
- Threaded, and they travel with a share link
- For when someone needs to answer you
Notes
- Beside the file, not inside it
- Not published by a share link
- Carry a category, a colour and a done state
The test: if the sentence is addressed to another person, it is a comment. If it is addressed to you, it is a note. Comments are covered in Comments and threads.
Book notes and file notes
When you create a note, one row of the form is a Book / Chapter toggle.
- Book — about the work as a whole: themes, a decision you have not made, a thread you are saving for a sequel.
- Chapter — tied to the file you have open right now. With no file open, Chapter is greyed out, because there is nothing to tie it to.
The filter row at the top of the panel follows the same line. All shows your book notes plus the notes on the file you have open; Chapter narrows to that file alone. Inside a .script file, once your cursor sits in a scene, a third level appears — Scene — showing only the notes anchored to that scene.
The Ink Tide sample book ships with three notes you can open and read:
| Note | Category | Attached to | Colour |
|---|---|---|---|
| Image: the Stele drinking words | Note | The book | Gray |
| Setup: the grey glove | Setup | Chapter 02 - The Word Bureau | Blue |
| Payoff: the glove comes off | Payoff | Chapter 08 - Pei Zhao | Green |
The first is about where the whole book's dread comes from, so it belongs to no single chapter and sits at book level. The other two are tied to the chapters they happen in: open chapter 2 and you see the setup; open chapter 8 and you see the payoff.
Four categories
The editor offers four:
| Category | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Note | A thought, a decision, a piece of the world |
| To-do | Something you have to go and change |
| Setup | Something planted here that has to come back |
| Payoff | Where something planted earlier is delivered |
Above the cards there is a second row of tabs — All / Notes / Foreshadow / To-do — each with a count. There is no Payoff tab. Payoff notes show up under All, or you reach them from the setup they are paired with. Pairing is covered in Tracking foreshadowing with notes.
Four colours
Gray, red, blue, green.
Slima does not assign them meanings — they are yours to sort with. The sample book uses a common split: gray for ideas, blue for something planted, green for something delivered, red for "this is a problem". Picking one convention and keeping it across the book matters more than which colour means what.
A to-do shows a checkbox where every other category shows its colour dot, so you can tick it off from the card. If a note is doing its work through colour, don't make it a to-do.
What a card does
- Click it — expands the full text (collapsed, the body shows three lines)
- Hover it — a pencil (edit), a check (mark as done) and a bin (delete) appear
- Drag it — reorders the list
- Mark as done — the card sinks into the collapsed Done group at the bottom, title struck through
- The body is Markdown: bold, lists and links all render
The number beside the panel title is how many notes this book has. When you have setups, a lightbulb appears next to it showing how many are paired out of the total. The line along the bottom repeats the total and how many are still open.
You can also drag a note out of the panel onto a .map whiteboard, where it becomes a card on the canvas — see Relationship map.
On a phone
The bottom bar has a Notes tab that opens full screen. It is arranged differently from the desktop panel: three groups — This chapter · <file> / Book notes / Other chapters — and any group that filters down to nothing is hidden, heading included. The tabs are All / Notes / To-do / Foreshadowing, and here Foreshadowing counts setups and payoffs together; the desktop Foreshadow tab counts setups only.
Two things the phone has that the desktop panel does not: Pin to top inside the edit sheet, and a confirmation step before a delete.
On the desktop the bin deletes immediately, with no confirmation. And notes are not under version control — they are in no snapshot, so once one is gone there is no history to restore it from. If you want a note out of the way but not gone, mark it as done instead of deleting it.
Related
- Docs: Tracking foreshadowing with notes
- Docs: Which notes the AI sees
- Docs: Comments and threads
- Docs: The activity bar
- Docs: Who can see your content
Open the app and do this with your own book. Free to start, no credit card.