Strut is one workspace built around a single long piece of writing. A project holds your rough notes, imported sources, documents, versions, and collaborators, and the editor sits in the middle of all of it. This guide walks the whole path once, from the moment you create a project to the moment you export a finished manuscript.
- Create one project per finished piece; the free plan holds three at a time.
- Put material into rough notes and sources first, so drafting starts with context instead of a blank page.
- Learn four keys: Cmd/Ctrl+F to find, Cmd/Ctrl+S to name a version, Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to run an operation, Escape to close what is open.
- Select a passage before running an operation, and read the difference before letting a replacement land.
- Finish in the Export menu: PDF, Word, Markdown, or plain text.
Start with a project, not a blank page
Everything in Strut lives inside a project. On the workspace page, type a name into the new project form and submit it. Strut creates the project, a first document called Untitled manuscript, and one rough note asking what made the work worth starting. Name the project after the thing you intend to finish.
The free plan holds three projects at once, and the workspace says so plainly when you reach the limit. Pro removes the cap. Three is usually enough while you learn the shape of the tool: one piece being drafted, one piece in revision, and one place to think.
Deleting a project is permanent, and only its owner can do it. Notes, documents, versions, comments, sources, and stored files go with it. Nothing is quietly archived, so export anything worth keeping before you remove a project you no longer want in the list.
Learn the three areas of the screen
The left sidebar is navigation. It lists the documents in this project, builds an outline from the headings in the current draft, and offers six panels: Rough notes, Sources, Structure, Version history, Collaboration, and History. Underneath sit links to workspace search and your Writer Voice Profile.
The middle column is the manuscript. A top bar carries the save status, the Export menu, and five buttons: Find, Stats, Read, Type, and Focus. Below that you get the document title, a live word count, the formatting toolbar, and the editing surface itself.
The right side is the Strut AI panel, headed by your remaining token balance. On a narrow screen it collapses behind the ✦ AI button in the corner. Escape closes the panel and the mobile sidebar, so you can always get back to plain text on screen.
A workspace only pays for itself when the material and the manuscript share one address.
Capture rough notes before you draft
Open Rough notes and press New note. Each note is a title and a body, both of which save themselves about half a second after you stop typing. There is no folder structure and no tagging step. The panel exists so unfinished material has somewhere to go that is not the manuscript.
Notes are also where transcription lands. Under the note grid, Start recording captures a voice note through your microphone, or you can upload an audio file instead. Strut AI transcribes it, adds a short list of possible writing leads, and files the result as a new rough note.
Delete is deliberate: the small × on a card asks for confirmation, and the removal is written into the project history with the note title attached. Keep a note until the sentence inside it has either reached the draft or been ruled out on purpose. Volume is not a problem here, and notes cost nothing to keep.
Bring your sources into the project
The Sources panel imports up to ten files at a time in TXT, Markdown, CSV, PDF, DOCX, or XLSX form. Text is extracted on import so the material becomes searchable immediately. PDFs are handled page by page, which is what makes page citations possible later.
Open Source Reader on any imported file to read the extracted pages beside the project. Select a passage there and save it, and Strut writes a rough note containing the quotation plus a provenance line naming the file and the page. The clip stays attached to the source it came from.
Scanned pages with no selectable text are marked, and transcribing them with Strut AI is opt-in rather than automatic. On the free plan, imported files share a 100 MB allowance, and the account page shows how much of it you have used.
Draft in the editor and let it save itself
The editor autosaves as you type, and the top bar reports Saving, then Saved. If a save fails, the draft is kept in your browser and retried, and the status line tells you that plainly. A stored copy that never reached the server is offered back to you the next time you open the document.
The toolbar handles structure: two heading levels, bold, italic, quote, bulleted and numbered lists, a divider, and a button that returns a block to a plain paragraph. Headings matter beyond appearance, because the outline in the sidebar is built from them and scrolls you to any section on click.
Four buttons change how the page behaves. Find opens find and replace, also reachable with Cmd/Ctrl+F while your cursor is in the draft. Stats computes readability numbers locally. Read speaks the draft using a voice from your own device. Type centres the current line, and Focus hides everything else.
Give the AI panel one bounded job
Highlight the passage you want worked on. If nothing is highlighted, the whole document is used as material, which is rarely what you want mid-draft. Then pick an operation from the dropdown, write a Direction describing what must stay true, and press the button or use Cmd/Ctrl+Enter.
Results arrive in the panel, never straight into your manuscript. You can copy them, insert them after your selection, or replace the selection. Replacement shows a word-level difference first, with additions and removals marked, and you decide between Apply replacement and Keep original.
Before any AI edit changes the draft, Strut saves a version so the previous text survives in Version history. That safety net is what makes it reasonable to try an aggressive revision on a paragraph you already like. If the result is worse, the earlier wording is two clicks away in the history panel.
Version it, review it, export it
Cmd/Ctrl+S saves a named version. Strut also writes autosave checkpoints as you work. In Version history you can compare any version with the current draft, tick two versions to compare them against each other, or restore one, which preserves your existing draft as a version first.
For outside eyes, use Collaboration. A review snapshot freezes the current text behind a link that can carry a password and an expiry of 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days, and can be revoked at any moment. Later edits stay private until you refresh the snapshot deliberately.
Collaborators with a Strut account can be added as editors or reviewers, and comments live under the document with an optional passage reference. When the piece is done, the Export menu produces a PDF manuscript, a Word document, Markdown, or plain text.
One chapter, set up in ten minutes
A chapter draft in a word processor, three interview PDFs in a downloads folder, half the good quotations pasted into a chat window, and the argument written on paper next to the keyboard.
One Strut project named for the chapter. The three PDFs imported as sources, the quotations clipped into rough notes with their page numbers attached, the argument typed into Central thread, and the draft in the editor beside all of it.
Not one new sentence was written during that setup. The material simply stopped living in four places, so the next session opens with the argument visible instead of a search for it.
Common mistakes
| The mistake | Why it costs you, and what to do instead |
|---|---|
| Treating the first document as the whole project | The document Strut creates for you is one file among several. Research memos, pitches, and chapters belong in their own documents inside the same project, where they share notes, sources, and history without crowding the manuscript. |
| Running an operation with nothing selected | With no selection, the entire document becomes the material. On a long draft that produces vague, general output. Highlight the paragraph or section you actually want changed, then run the operation. |
| Saving versions only when you remember | Autosave checkpoints exist, but they are not labelled for you. Press Cmd/Ctrl+S before any restructuring, and give the version a name you will recognise in a week. |
| Sending an editor into your live project | A collaborator with editing rights can change the manuscript while you write. When you only want reactions, create a review snapshot instead: it freezes the text, accepts a password and an expiry, and can be revoked. |
Your checklist
- Create the project and rename its first document to the piece you are actually writing.
- Import the sources the draft depends on, and clip the passages you already know you will quote.
- Write the central claim into the Structure panel before you draft anything long.
- Draft with autosave running, and name a version before every significant restructure.
- Run AI operations on selected passages, reviewing each difference before applying it.
- Share a review snapshot for feedback, then export the finished manuscript in the format your reader needs.
Key terms
- Project
- The container for one body of long-form work. It holds documents, rough notes, imported sources, version history, comments, collaborators, and a record of everything that has happened.
- Rough note
- A small titled piece of text stored beside the manuscript. Notes hold quotations, transcriptions, and unfinished thinking that is not ready to be placed in the draft.
- Review snapshot
- A frozen copy of a document published at a private link. It can be password-protected, given an expiry, refreshed on purpose, or revoked instantly.
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Frequently asked questions
How many projects can I keep on the free plan?
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Three at a time. The workspace refuses a fourth and points you at Pro, which removes the limit entirely. Every project on the free plan still gets unlimited rough notes, unlimited documents, full version history, source imports, collaborator comments, all four export formats, and workspace search.
Does Strut save my work automatically?
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Yes. The editor saves shortly after you stop typing and shows the status in the top bar. If a save cannot reach the server, the draft is stored in your browser and retried, and you are offered the stored copy when you return.
What is the difference between Read and narration?
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Read uses the speech voices installed on your own device, costs nothing, and stops when you edit. Narration in the AI panel produces a downloadable audio file made by Strut AI and consumes tokens, up to 5,000 characters per run.
Can I work on more than one document in a project?
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Yes, and most serious projects should. The sidebar creates new documents, and each can start blank or from an essay, chapter, article pitch, or research memo structure. Versions, comments, and exports belong to individual documents, while rough notes and imported sources are shared across the whole project.
What happens to my sources if I delete a project?
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Sources are removed along with the notes, documents, versions, and comments belonging to it. Deletion is permanent, restricted to the owner, and includes the stored files themselves rather than only their database records. Download anything you still need before you confirm, because no copy is kept anywhere.
Do I need to be online to write?
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You need a connection for saving and for anything involving Strut AI. Short interruptions are handled gracefully: the draft is kept in your browser and pushed again once the connection returns, with the top bar telling you which state you are currently in. Longer outages are not supported.