Plot grid

What every thread is doing in every scene. A scene is a row, a hand-drawn thread is a column, and the cell is what the thread does in the scene, in your words, even when it is off the page. It is the spreadsheet J. K. Rowling drew for Order of the Phoenix, grown out of the story timeline: the cast the timeline spread across the pane folds into one column, and the width goes to the threads. Open it from the ribbon (the table icon), with Open plot grid, or with the Plot grid button on a story card.

Reading it

• Rows are scenes, headings with prose under them, grouped under their chapter, whose row says how many scenes, words and members of the cast it holds, and under the folder the chapter sits in, read as an act. A heading with no prose yet is a row too, marked outline: the scene is planned, not written. Click a chapter name to open the note, a scene to put the cursor on its heading. ★ marks a bookmarked heading. The project note itself is not a scene.

• Words and Plot are filled by the code: the scene's length, and the events the model summarised for it once the scene has been read.

• Columns are your threads from Story threads.md, one per ## heading, in the note's order within their kind. A heading's prefix says what kind of column it is, and the header's stripe repeats it:

  ## Arc: [[Anna]]
  ## Theme: What we owe the dead
  ## Subplot: The letter
  ## Salt on the wind

  An arc follows one character; the heading links their note, and the header carries their dot. A theme is an argument the book makes. A subplot is a line of events. A heading with no prefix is a free thread, as every thread ever written was. A prefix that is almost one of these ("Arcs:", "Sub-plot:") is read as a free thread and the state line says so.

• Cells are the thread's stops at the scene, the lines under the heading. The first stop's note shows, a +1 says there is another. A stop's role is a glyph before it: ▶ plant, ◀ payoff, ▼ reversal; under an arc, ▸ want, ▹ lie, ▼ turn, ◂ truth. A click selects a cell; o or Open scene goes to the scene, at the stop's quote when it has one.

• The cell's edge is its audit. A stop with no quote is a plan: a claim about the scene, typed ahead of the draft or from memory of it. A stop anchored to a quote the code finds in the scene is verified and carries a green edge; one whose quote no longer matches is broken and carries an amber one, the same as the threads chart's warning for a lost anchor.

• Present, unmoved. Once an arc column holds a verified stop, a scene where its character is on the page and the arc has no stop says so, faintly. It is the grid's one finding of its own: the scene where someone is in the room and nothing happens to them. It stays quiet until a column has earned it, because on a first draft it would fire everywhere.

• Cast. One column with a dot per member of the cast in their kind's colour, absence a faint dot, so a long absence still reads down the column. Click the header (or Plot grid: fold or expand the cast) and it spreads into one column per name, as the timeline drew it; click a name to open its note. The Kinds toggles in the story map panel apply here too.

• Groups. Over the table, one pill per kind with its count: click a pill and the group folds out of the way; the pill says 3 folded until it is clicked again. The Cast pill folds and expands the cast. Folds are remembered.

• Three columns with a job. The project note can name a thread as the grid's POV, Time or main theme, with plot-pov, plot-time and plot-theme in its front matter, each holding a heading as written in the threads note. A column's menu (the ⋯ on its header, or a right click) has Use as POV / Time / Main theme, which writes the key for you. POV and Time move to the derived block after Words: Time in monospace, POV as a dot in the character's colour and their name, with a 3 px chip in that colour on the scene's name so the eye's owner survives a sideways scroll; the main theme is pinned first among the themes and read in the eyebrow over the grid. Nothing is inferred from a heading's name; a thread called Time that has not been given the job is an ordinary thread.

• A column's menu also sets its kind (the prefix rewritten in the note), renames it (the side column's Column section holds the field, and a column that had a job keeps it), hides it (the state line counts hidden columns and offers Show hidden) and deletes it.

The first column and the header row stay put while you scroll. A long manuscript is drawn sixty rows at a time, the next sixty as the last one scrolls into view, so a hundred and fifty scenes open as fast as eight; the keys reach every row regardless. The search filters columns and cast. A key in the corner names the glyphs, and the kinds when the cast is spread out. The head's ⋯ menu holds the folds, the cast toggle, hide and show, Present, unmoved, the panel, the search, the key list, Open Story threads.md and Clear the search, each as the command it also is.

Writing in it

Everything typed into the grid is a line in Story threads.md; the grid writes lines and never owns them, so the note stays yours to edit by hand.

• Select a cell with a click, or with the arrow keys once one is selected; Home and End go to the row's first and last column, Page Up and Page Down ten rows. The side column's Cell section follows: the scene, the state, the role, the anchor, the note.
• Type into a cell with Enter, a second click, or a double click. The field grows with the text; Enter, Tab or a click elsewhere saves, Shift+Enter makes a new line, Escape puts it back. A stop that had a role and a quote keeps them. Emptying a cell removes the stop.
• Role and anchor are set in the side column: the role from the four thread roles, or the eight under an arc; the anchor as a few words quoted from the scene, which the grid looks for in the prose and reports as verified or broken. Save stop writes the line. Remove stop (or Delete on the selected cell) takes it out.
• Open scene (or o) goes to the scene at the anchor when there is one. Escape from a selected cell puts the focus on the row's name.
• Columns: the side column lists every column by kind with its count; New column takes a heading, Arc: [[Anna]], Theme: …, Subplot: … or a plain name, and writes it to the note as an empty section, ready to fill. The ✕ on a column arms, and a second click deletes the heading and every stop under it.
• Every write reports in the status line with Undo for eight seconds: a changed cell goes back to its previous line, a written one is removed, a removed one is written back, a deleted column comes back with its stops.

Before the draft and after it

The grid is used twice, and the two uses are one cell in two states. Before a scene has prose, a cell is a plan: a stop with no anchor, typed from the outline; a heading with no prose is a row all the same. Once the scene is written, the same cell can be checked against the page: a plan becomes verified when it carries a quote the grid finds in the prose, broken when the quote no longer matches.

• Audit view (v, the side column's Rows section, or the command) draws every cell by its state, ◇ plan · ◆ verified · ◈ broken, every header by its counts, and the state line as 40 cells · 12 filled · 8 verified · 3 broken. It is a lens, not a screen: same rows, same columns, same scroll. It is not remembered.
• Anchoring (", or Pick… beside the anchor field) lists the scene's sentences in the side column; on a broken stop, the sentences nearest the lost quote come first, marked with how much they share. Enter, or a click, writes the sentence as the stop's anchor. n and p walk the broken anchors, so repair is three keys: n, ", Enter.
• Export the grid to a note (⋯ menu) writes the same table as Plot grid.md, refreshed on every export, for a print or a spreadsheet; Snapshot the grid writes the grid as a dated markdown table beside the project, Plot grid · 2026-09-13.md, one row per scene, one column per thread, each cell its stop with the role and a ✓ where verified. The status line names the file with Open. It is never read back (its front matter says so), so keep it, diff it, or delete it: two snapshots side by side are the outline against the draft.

Reading with the model

The model reads; you write. A pass over a column shows the model each scene that has prose and no stop in that column, with the column's kind, its name, and the notes you have already written there as examples of your voice, and asks one question: what is this thread doing in this scene? What comes back is a reading: a note of at most twenty words and the verbatim quote that made the model think so. A reading whose quote is not on the page is dropped before it is saved. A reading is never a stop, and never a line in a chapter: it lives in Story map.md, and it is answered by you.

• Read this column with the model… is in a column's menu; Read… in the head (the sparkle) reads every thread column. The state line counts scenes as they go, Stop ends the pass with everything that landed kept; a scene unchanged since it was last read for that column is skipped, and so is one whose reading you dismissed.
• A reading waits in the empty cell as a sparkle on a dashed edge, never as text. Select the cell and the side column shows it whole: the note, the quote, the model. When you edit that cell, the reading is the field's placeholder, faint and uncopyable; you type over it in your own words. Writing the cell answers the reading. Dismiss (or x) is the other answer, remembered until the scene changes. n and p walk the readings awaiting you along with the broken anchors; the state line says how many there are.
• Check this column against the draft… is the pass for after the draft: each plan in the column (a stop with no anchor) is shown to the model with the scene as written, and the answer is a quote when the plan is on the page or not on the page when it is not. A found plan's side column offers Anchor to it, which writes the quote as the stop's anchor; a missing one stands as a debt until you either write the scene or take the plan out.
• The model is whichever Model the settings name: Local (Ollama) reads for nothing; Claude counts against the same daily cap as the style assistant and shows its spend there. With the model off, the head says so.
• Propose columns… (⋯ menu, the side column, or the empty grid) asks the model one question over the outline the map already holds, the events read per scene and the cast, rather than every page: which threads run through more than one scene and deserve a column. The proposals land in the side column with a tick each, a sentence, and the scenes that carry them; one that already exists is greyed; Add writes the ticked ones as empty headings, with Undo. With no scene read for its events yet, the grid offers Read the project first.
• The prompt asks in the column's kind: an arc is asked what the scene does to the character's want, a theme how the scene argues it, a subplot what happens to it. A small local model reads subplots well and arcs less well; read an arc with a larger one, or write it yourself.

Keys

Click anywhere on the grid and the keys work; press ? for the list on the grid itself. Tab is never taken: it moves the focus as it does everywhere in Obsidian, and Ctrl and Cmd stay with Obsidian's own hotkeys. Nothing is bound by default.

Key	Does
← → ↑ ↓	Move between cells. Home End first and last column; PgUp PgDn ten rows.
Enter	Edit the cell in place. Editing: Enter saves, Shift+Enter a new line, Escape puts the line back.
Escape	On a cell: back to the row's name.
Delete	Take the stop out, with Undo.
"	Anchor: pick a sentence of the scene; on a broken stop, the near matches first.
n p	Next and previous reading awaiting you, or broken anchor.
x	Dismiss the reading in the cell.
o	Open the scene, at the anchor when there is one.
v	Audit view.
?	The list.

Folding a group, hiding a column, showing the hidden ones, the search, the panel and Present, unmoved are commands, each named in the ⋯ menu, so a key of your own can be bound in Settings → Hotkeys.

The line the grid writes is the line you would write:

## Subplot: The letter
- [[Chapter 3#The station]] — plant: "she pocketed the letter without reading it" Anna pockets it

Same data as the map and the threads

The grid is a projection of the same graph the story map builds and the same threads the story threads view draws: same notes, same mentions, same Story map.md readings, same Story threads.md lines. Nothing is stored for the grid itself, so two machines with the same notes draw the same grid.