Musawrite runs entirely on your machine — no account, no subscription, and your manuscript never leaves your computer. Bring your own AI key (or run a local model) and write with assistance that you stay in control of.
AI is genuinely useful for drafting, rewriting, and brainstorming fiction — but the popular tools for it are closed-source cloud products that want your whole manuscript on their servers. Musawrite exists for two reasons:
- Write with AI without handing your work to a third party. Tools like Sudowrite, NovelCrafter, and similar cloud writing apps store your prose on their infrastructure. Musawrite keeps everything in a local SQLite file on your own machine. Your API keys are write-only — they're saved on your local server and never sent back to the browser, and all AI requests are proxied locally so your provider key stays put.
- Make AI-assisted writing open source. This category is dominated by proprietary SaaS. Musawrite is a free, self-hostable alternative you can read, fork, and run yourself.
The guiding philosophy: the human writes, the AI assists. Every AI suggestion requires your explicit action to apply — nothing is ever inserted into your document automatically.
Musawrite is a writing environment built around character intelligence — characters aren't just database entries. They have voice profiles, speech patterns, and beliefs that shape how the AI responds when speaking as them or about them. Around that sits a full section-based editor, a world-building codex, and an AI workshop you fully control.
Download Musawrite — either clone it with git, or click Code → Download ZIP on GitHub and extract it. You'll need Node.js v18+, but the launcher will try to install it for you if it's missing.
Then, from the Musawrite folder:
- Windows: double-click
Start.bat. - macOS / Linux: run
./start.shin a terminal.
The launcher installs everything it needs, builds the app, and starts it at http://localhost:3001. Keep the window open while you write — closing it stops Musawrite.
Contributors: pnpm install && pnpm dev:all, then open http://localhost:5173.
Your writing — and your API keys — live in data/musawrite.db (unencrypted, single-user local); back up by copying that file. For updating, production builds, and backup details, see the Installation guide.
Musawrite is bring-your-own-key. Add your key in Settings (gear icon, top-right) and pick a model. Keys are stored on your local server and are write-only — the browser can save or clear a key but can never read it back, and every AI call is proxied through your local server so the key never reaches the browser.
It works with cloud providers (OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Groq, xAI, Together) and local/offline servers (Ollama, LM Studio, KoboldCpp, llama.cpp). OpenRouter is the easiest place to start — one key, hundreds of models, and a free tier.
Provider links and step-by-step setup: AI setup guide.
- Section-based editor with autosave, version history, and export (Markdown, PDF, EPUB)
- Codex — world-building database for characters, locations, lore, and objects
- AI panel — chat, writing suggestions, and in-character dialogue from your characters
- Context control — choose exactly which sections and codex entries the AI sees
- Spellcheck with custom dictionary per project
- Synonyms via local WordNet (no internet required)
Full feature list: musawrite.app/docs
User docs live at musawrite.app/docs (the markdown sources are in site/docs/):
For contributors: CONTRIBUTING.md and AGENTS.md (architecture guide).
Join the conversation, ask for help, or share what you're writing:
- Discord: discord.gg/tF74gDsBps
AGPL-3.0 — see LICENSE.