Welcome to φ Poiesis
Poiesis is a desktop writing app for long work: novels, poetry and essays, and the notes and journal entries that go with them. It gives you a quiet page. It keeps every word in files on your own computer.
Get started
- Install Poiesis on macOS, Windows or Linux.
- Create your first vault. A vault is the folder that holds your writing.
- Take a tour of the window.
- Click the sample project, The Grey Morning, in the sidebar. Then click Export under it to see how Poiesis lays out a book.
Three modes in one vault
Poiesis has three modes: Write, Notes and Journal. Write is the main one. All three share one vault, so a chapter can link to a note, and a journal entry can mention a character.
| Mode | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Write | Your projects (a novel, a poetry collection, a book of essays) with their parts and chapters. Also Pieces: writing that is not in a project yet. Characters, authors and research are here too. |
| Notes | Ideas, sources, lines you overheard. You can use folders, tags, stars, boards and templates. |
| Journal | A page for each day. Also morning pages: three pages that you write at the start of the day. |
Two things work in every mode:
- Links. Type
[[to link one document to another. The graph shows how your documents connect. - Sanctuary. Press
⌘.to hide everything except the page.
Your writing stays yours
- Your files are in a folder you choose. You need no account, and Poiesis does not use the cloud. Writing, searching and exporting all work offline.
- Poiesis saves as you type. It saves every document all the time, and checks each save. Version history lets you go back to any earlier draft. You can also back it up to your own git remote if you want a copy somewhere else. See Versions & backup.
- Your work is easy to move and keep. Copy the folder and you have copied everything. You can keep a vault in iCloud Drive, Dropbox or another synced folder. Poiesis for iPhone and iPad is not out yet. When it is, it will open the same vault. See Vaults.
Each document is a .poiesis file. The file holds your text and its details
as structured content, so annotations, footnotes and citations are kept
complete. Poiesis does not store Markdown, but you can import it, paste it and
export it.
Poiesis is stable and ready to hold your writing. It keeps the Beta label a little longer while more people try it out. If something seems off, the Beta badge at the bottom of the sidebar is the quickest way to say so.
What Poiesis isn't
- A cloud service. Nothing leaves your computer unless you set up a backup or put the vault in a synced folder yourself.
- A real-time collaboration tool. Poiesis is for one writer at a time.