Two years of reading leaves you knowing how everything in the subject connects, and a book still has to say one thing at a time. Filamental keeps the research as what it is, people, events, sources and claims joined to each other, so the chapter order becomes a route you choose through it rather than a guess you hope holds.
Three hundred sources, forty interviews, a folder of scanned letters and notes in three different apps. A person who matters in chapter three and again in chapter eleven, and has to be introduced properly the first time. Two accounts of the same night that don’t agree, and you only remember they don’t when the fact-checker asks.
None of that is disorganisation. The subject really is a web where everything touches everything else, and the page only runs in one direction, so every chapter order cuts the web in a different place and you can’t see where until you’ve written it.
Every person, event, source and claim is one node, and each line between them says what the relationship is: supported by, involves, contradicts. The engineer who appears in three chapters is one engineer, with every chapter that needs her listed on her.
The chapters are nodes too, joined in order by leads into, and each one holds the claims it makes. So the book’s order is something you can see and change, laid over the research rather than buried in it. Redraw the lines to try another order, and every claim, source and person stays attached to the chapter that uses it.
Then test the line. Pathfinder lights the shortest chain between two nodes and names every stop on the way, so you can check that the idea in chapter two really reaches the conclusion in chapter nine, and see which steps the reader has to take to get there. Highlight supported by and every claim with its evidence stays lit while the rest dims, so a claim standing on nothing is easy to spot.
If the research already sits in a folder, you don’t have to retype it. Folder Exploration reads Markdown, text, Word and PDF files with an AI you connect, proposes the categories and connectors first so you can change them before anything is read, and builds the space with a summary in each node’s notes. Every node lists the documents it came from, so each fact keeps its trail.
It’s a first draft for you to arrange and check, and it only reads, so the original folder is still the original afterwards. The AI is yours, a hosted provider on your own account or a model on your own computer, and your documents go straight to it, never through us.
Rather not use an AI at all? Drag a PDF or a transcript onto the node it belongs to, and it opens in its usual app whenever you need it.
Keep drafting in whatever you draft in, and keep your reference manager for the citations. Filamental holds what sits between them, which is what each source is doing in the argument.
Your notes are plain Markdown files in a folder on your own machine. Filamental needs no account, sends no telemetry and works offline, and every note still opens in any text editor if you ever stop using it.
Filamental won’t write the book. Folder Exploration summarises your sources for you to check, and every sentence of the book stays yours.
An agent wants the shape of the book before anyone buys it, an editor wants to know why chapter seven comes before chapter eight, and a fact-checker wants the source behind every claim. They’re all asking about the same structure from different sides.
Publisher lays a space out as a document, a page per chapter if you like, and it goes out as a link or a single file that opens in an ordinary browser, with the notes and the sources attached. Whoever receives it installs nothing.
Our templates are a starting vocabulary, so the categories arrive named when you make a space.
Nonfiction Book holds the chapters and the line through them, Research & Fact-Check keeps every claim against its evidence, and Investigation Timeline suits a history or a biography that turns on dates. Add more than one to the same space and they share whatever they have in common.
Everything on this page except the sending is on the free plan, permanently, with no account and no card, and a folder of research read in by Folder Exploration arrives whole, however large it is. The reading itself is billed by the AI provider you chose, or costs nothing on a model on your own computer.
Spaces are unlimited and the bridges between them are free, so a big book becomes a few linked spaces, the sources, the people and the chapters, each holding twenty nodes. Professional is $120 a year, or $12 a month, and keeps a big space whole, sends it to somebody who doesn’t have Filamental and presents it, which for most writers means the proposal and the editor.
No, and you should keep them. Filamental doesn’t want your manuscript, and it won’t format a bibliography or manage citation keys. It sits beside them and holds what the book is built from, the people, events, sources and claims, and how they connect, with each chapter as a node joined to the claims it makes. The prose stays in your writing app and the references stay in your library.
Yes, if you want it to. Folder Exploration reads a folder of Markdown, text, Word and PDF files with an AI you connect, and Document Exploration reads one long document. Before anything is read, the AI proposes the categories and connectors and you change them as you like, and you see an estimate of the work first. Each node it makes names the documents it came from. Your files are only read, never changed, and they go straight to the provider you chose, never through Filamental.
Make each chapter a node and join them in order with a connector such as leads into, which the Nonfiction Book Template includes. Attach the claims, people and events each chapter uses, and the order becomes a line you can see laid over the research. Redraw the lines to try another order, and use Pathfinder to light the chain between two ideas, so you can check the reader has every step they need between them.
Yes. Make each source a node and join each claim to the sources that support it, or let Folder Exploration do the first pass, since every node it makes lists its source documents. Drag the PDF or the interview transcript onto its node and it opens in its usual app with a click. Highlight the supported by connector and every claim with evidence stays lit, so one standing on nothing shows.
Yes. Filamental is a desktop app that keeps your project as files in a folder on your own computer, with no account, no sign-in and no telemetry. If you connect an AI, your documents go directly to the provider you chose, on your own account, or stay on your machine with a model running locally. Nothing reaches our servers unless you publish a share link.
Yes. Publisher turns a space into a document you send as a link or a single HTML file, and it opens in an ordinary browser with the structure navigable inside it, a page per chapter if you lay it out that way. Whoever receives it installs nothing, creates no account and pays nothing.
Close, and there’s a page for that. A thesis has the same problem with a stricter rule about evidence, so the academia page covers the literature review, the methods and the argument a supervisor or a panel has to follow, with the Templates built for it: Literature Review, Research Methodology and Research Planning.
One chapter and its sources is enough to find out whether this suits how you think. Free, no account, no card.