> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.docwriter.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Introduction
> A research project on writing with AI.
DocWriter is a writing IDE with an AI agent as a concurrent collaborator.
The goal of the project is to ask, how can we reap the productivity
benefits of AI in writing, without losing our agency and fine-grained
control of our personal voice?
Think of it as the writing analog of an agentic coding tool like Claude
Code or Codex — because it essentially **is** Claude Code, pointed at
your writing workspace instead of a code repo. DocWriter is built on the
[Claude Agent SDK](https://docs.claude.com/en/agent-sdk/overview), so
the agent has the same built-in capabilities Claude Code has: file
editing, shell / Bash, web search, and code execution. On top of those,
DocWriter adds its own MCP tools for writing-specific operations
(`edit_doc`, `read_doc`, `post_comment`, `propose_rule`, and so on).
The interface is the part that's different, organized around two design
philosophies:
## Direct manipulation over delegation
Most AI tools route every interaction through a chat window. DocWriter
provides direct affordances for the writing-specific routines instead:
* **Inline feedback.** Highlight a passage and a popup appears. Type
custom feedback or click a pill ("Too verbose", "AI smell", or your
recent feedbacks). Modes: Auto / Edit / Discuss.
* **Rules.** Persistent style preferences ("avoid passive voice").
* **References.** Voice samples the agent matches.
* **Hooks.** Shell commands on agent events (pdflatex, pandoc,
mermaid, git auto-commit, and anything else you wire up).
* **Autonomy.** One setting — conservative, balanced, or aggressive —
for how proactive the agent is by default.
* **Comment threads.** Reply in the margin where the agent's comment
is, instead of re-anchoring the conversation in chat.
For requests that don't fit a routine (research a topic, restructure
across files, fix a build), the chat popover is still there.
## Asynchronous, in-medium collaboration
Most AI tools are turn-based: submit, wait, continue. DocWriter is
structured so the agent runs continuously alongside you. Each time you
pause typing, the agent reads the open documents, reacts to what you
changed, picks up any inline directives, and proposes edits or
comments. Your typing keeps going during all of this — the two
streams of edits merge in the same buffer.
* **Inline directives.** Type `[[ tighten this paragraph ]]` (or
`(( ))` or `<< >>`) and keep writing. The agent picks the note up
on its next pass and handles it, deleting the directive text from
the doc.
* **Suggestions, not overwrites.** Agent edits arrive as track-changes.
The document is a CRDT (like Google Docs), so the agent's edits and
your concurrent typing merge cleanly even when you're editing the
same paragraph.
* **Background work.** Long tasks (multi-file rewrites, build-fix
loops, web research) run without blocking the editor.
* **Observability.** The history pane logs every tool call and hook
run as it happens; a separate transcript viewer browses earlier
turns. No black box.
Get DocWriter running locally.
A five-minute walk-through.
What every part of the screen does.
The marquee end-to-end example.
***
*DocWriter is a research project by [Shreya Shankar](https://sh-reya.com) and collaborators at the [EPIC Data Lab](https://epic.berkeley.edu).*