Writing is rewriting — and sometimes the version you had two hours ago was better. Writer Mode quietly keeps a history of saved snapshots for each chapter, so you can look back at earlier drafts and restore one whenever you need to. It's your safety net for bold edits and big AI rewrites.

How snapshots work

Each chapter keeps its own history of saved snapshots, each stamped with the time it was captured. Because Writer Mode autosaves as you work, your history builds up naturally as you write — you don't have to remember to create restore points.

View and restore an earlier version

1. Open the chapter you want to review.
2. Choose Versions to see the chapter's saved snapshots.
3. Browse the earlier versions by their timestamps to find the one you want.
4. Click Restore to bring that previous version back as the current text.

Restoring is non-destructive

Restoring an old snapshot doesn't erase your newer ones — it simply makes the chosen version your current text and records a new current state. That means you can move backward and forward freely: restore an earlier draft, decide you preferred the newer one, and restore that instead. Nothing is lost in the process.

When to use it

• Before a big AI rewrite. If you're about to ask the AI assistant to transform a large passage, you already have a safe point to return to.
• After heavy hand-editing. Trimmed too much? Roll back and try again.
• To compare directions. Glance at earlier snapshots to remember a phrasing you'd abandoned.

Version history vs. drafts

Version history is per-chapter and per-save — it's for rolling a single chapter back to how it read earlier. If you instead want to explore a whole alternate direction for the entire story — a different ending, a darker tone — across all chapters at once, create an alternate draft. The two tools complement each other: snapshots for fine-grained recovery, drafts for big branching experiments.

Common pitfalls

• Deleted chapters. A deleted chapter can only be recovered from version history if its content was snapshotted — see managing chapters.
• Looking in the wrong place. Version history is opened from within a specific chapter, so make sure you've selected the chapter you mean to restore before choosing Versions.