Scaffold

A Windows desktop application to help fiction writers overcome first-draft paralysis by scaffolding scenes before writing prose.

What it does

For every scene, you answer six structured questions:

1. Goal — What does the protagonist want?
2. Obstacle — What stands in their way?
3. Stakes — What do they lose if they fail?
4. Revelation — What shifts by the end of the scene?
5. Scene Ending — What is the last physical moment?
6. Tension Spike — What escalates conflict right before the end?

Once your scaffold is complete, you lock it — then you write.

Features

• Multiple projects — Manage all your novels from one home screen
• Kanban board — Three Act columns with Milestone groups and draggable scene cards
• Scaffold side panel — Six structured fields per scene with inline tooltips explaining each one
• Lock mechanism — Warn or strict mode; prevents accidental edits once a scene is planned
• Scaffold history — 50 automatic snapshots per scene; restore any previous version
• Thread view — Check scene-to-scene continuity by comparing Scene Ending with the next scene's Revelation
• Outline export — Export your entire project as Markdown or plain text (Ctrl+E)
• Undo / redo — Full command-pattern history for all structural changes (50-action cap)
• Drag-and-drop — Move milestones between Acts, reorder scenes within milestones
• AI Conflict Helper — Brainstorm escalating suggestions for Obstacle and Stakes fields (Anthropic, LM Studio, or Ollama)
• Settings — Configure AI providers, export format, project sort order, theme (light/dark), and more
• Project backup — One-click export of the entire SQLite database

Tech stack

• Electron v31 + Vite
• React 18 + TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS
• better-sqlite3 (local SQLite)
• dnd-kit (drag-and-drop)
• electron-store (window state & panel width)
• electron-builder (Windows NSIS installer)

Quick start

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Rebuild native modules for current Electron version
npm run rebuild

# Start in dev mode
npm run dev

# Build for production
npm run build

# Preview production build
npm run preview

# Create Windows installer (requires Wine on Linux/macOS)
npm run dist

Keyboard shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Undo	Ctrl+Z
Redo	Ctrl+Y
New Project	Ctrl+Shift+N
New Milestone	Ctrl+M
New Scene	Ctrl+N
Close Panel	Escape
Export Outline	Ctrl+E
Backup Project	Ctrl+Shift+B
Settings	Ctrl+,

Project structure

src/main/          — Electron main process (IPC, DB, menu, AI providers)
src/preload/       — Context bridge (typed IPC API exposed to renderer)
src/renderer/      — React app (screens, components, hooks, context, utils)
src/shared/        — TypeScript types shared between main and renderer
build/             — Distribution assets (icon.ico, icon.png)
scripts/           — Build helper scripts (generate-icon.js)

Data storage

All data is stored locally in a single SQLite database at %APPDATA%\Scaffold\scaffold.db.

• Multiple projects share one database
• Manual backup exports the .db file to a location of your choice
• No cloud sync; fully offline-first

Building the Windows installer

npm run dist

Produces dist/Scaffold Setup 0.1.0.exe.

From Linux/macOS: The NSIS .exe installer step requires Wine. If Wine is unavailable, the Windows app will still package correctly (dist/win-unpacked/Scaffold.exe), but the installer creation will fail.

License

MIT