Open your project, then either drag a file onto the Write studio's empty state or click "Upload manuscript" on the project's home tab. The file is parsed in the background; you'll see a progress indicator and can keep working while it runs.

When the import finishes the manuscript lands in the Write studio split into chapters (see Chapter detection). Every other studio that reads the manuscript, Edit, Pitch's synopsis builder, Sell's back cover, Market's comp tool, refreshes automatically.

Drop in any of: .docx (Word), .epub (the format every other writing platform exports), .pdf (text or rendered), and .txt. The cap is 20 MB per file, plenty for a 200,000-word novel even with images.

Other formats: Scrivener .scriv exports cleanly to .docx; export from Scrivener and upload the .docx. Google Docs: File → Download → .docx. Pages: File → Export to → Word. Markdown isn't directly supported yet but converts trivially via Pandoc.

Photos and scans: a full manuscript upload has to be one of the four file types above, but you can pull text out of individual page images (PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF) one or several at a time with Manuscripts -> Scan images to a chapter.

Chapter detection runs automatically on upload. It looks for heading styles first (Heading 1 or Heading 2 in .docx; spine items in .epub; bookmarked outlines in .pdf), then falls back to text patterns like "Chapter 1" or roman numerals followed by a blank line.

If the result isn't right, open the chapter list and use "Re-split", you can choose between heading-style, text-pattern, or "every page break." You can also drag chapter boundaries by hand or merge two chapters into one. Splits are project-local and don't change the original file you uploaded.

For designed or already-typeset books, graphic novels, illustrated children's books, poetry chapbooks, a print proof you want to leave alone, flip on "Keep PDF as source" before uploading. The original PDF stays the canonical document and the studios that need text read it through OCR rather than re-flowing.

This means the Design studio is not available for that project (the layout is already done), but everything else works: the Pitch studio can still draft a query against the prose, the cover designer can iterate on a new cover, and the comp set tool reads the text as normal.

Standard OCR uses a fast extractive engine for clean, machine-set PDFs, included on every tier. If the upload looks scanned, hand-written, or visually complex, WriteLoom falls back to Claude vision OCR, which reads page images and produces structured text.

Vision OCR is significantly higher quality on hard inputs but takes longer; it runs in the background and updates each chapter as pages complete. Vision OCR is included on Loom and Tapestry; Spool gets the fast OCR pass only.

If your text only exists on paper, in photos, or in screenshots, you can pull it into a chapter without retyping. In the Write studio, open the Chapters panel and click "Scan pages to chapter."

Pick one image or several at once (PNG, JPG, WebP, or GIF, up to 20 MB each). WriteLoom reads each page with Claude vision OCR, which handles photos of printed pages, screenshots, and handwriting. Choose where the text lands: a brand-new chapter, or appended to an existing one. When you add several pages at once, arrange them in reading order with the up and down controls and they are joined into a single chapter. Your original images are saved to the project's Media gallery, so nothing is lost.

Two notes: HEIC photos from iPhone are not supported, so export or save them as JPG first; and a blank or unreadable page is skipped (and reported) rather than stopping the rest of the batch.

Every re-upload archives the previous version rather than replacing it. Open Manuscript → Versions to see the timeline, date, size, source filename, and to restore a previous version into the live editor.

If you want a clean working copy for a major revision, "Fork from version" creates a sibling project with the same plan notes, characters, and media but a fresh manuscript history. Useful for "what if I cut the second act" experiments without losing the original.