Penflow is a writing app for novelists who want to own every word. Free to write, forever. Plain Markdown, versioned by git, stored in your own private GitHub repo.
The lamp above the writing desk drew a small, warm circle on the page. @Mira set the pen down and listened, not for a sound, but for the shape of one.
Outside, the rain eased into a whisper. She had promised @Captain Hart she would read the letter only when the hour grew late enough that no one else would. It was late enough.
The envelope was older than she'd expected. Thinner, too. She slid a nail along the seal and a faint perfume lifted into the room, a scent she remembered but could not name.
If you find this, it means I never came back. Do not try to find me. Find the desk instead.
Why Penflow
If you've used the other AI-for-novelists apps, you know the frustrations. A monthly fee on top of your API bill. A crash that eats a chapter. Marketing that promised a novel and delivered paragraphs. We built Penflow because we were tired of all of it.
No double-dip. The base app costs nothing, forever. If you want the AI reader, it's $2 a month for the feature — and you bring your own OpenRouter key, so the tokens you spend go straight to the provider. We never mark them up.
Every keystroke is autosaved to local storage. Every pause is committed. Every commit is pushed to your private GitHub repo. The worst possible outcome is that you lose the last thirty seconds. The ordinary outcome is that you lose nothing, ever.
Penflow's AI reads your scene, your codex, your outline. It responds to what you ask. It does not autogenerate a book. If you want a machine to write a novel for you, there are other tools, and they will also disappoint you. We are honest about this on purpose.
Penflow starts empty. A page and a cursor. Every feature exists because a writer asked for it, and every feature hides when you're not using it. No onboarding video. No empty dashboards. Nothing to set up before you can begin.
Penflow is a local-first editor. Write on a train, in a cabin, at a café with bad wifi. When you come back online, your commits push to GitHub on their own. No "failed to save" dialog. No Notepad-and-paste workaround.
Your manuscript is plain Markdown files in chapters and scenes on your GitHub. Open it in VS Code. Open it in Obsidian. Open it in Notepad. We are one of many ways to read your book. That is the point.
How it works
Penflow keeps nothing of yours. Every novel lives in its own private GitHub repo as plain Markdown. You write here, commit when you want to lock something in, pull when you've edited on the road. If we disappear tomorrow, your manuscript is still yours, still readable, still in your hands.
Penflow asks for permission to make one private repo per novel. No public pages, no shared anything. Your writing never passes through our servers.
A gentle editor that stays out of your way. Scene break, italic, block quote, a link to your codex. Nothing you can't read in a plain text file.
A commit is a small act of intention. Lock in a scene, a chapter, a pass. Pull your own history back any time. Version control for the way a novel is actually written.
What's inside
Penflow is built around how novelists actually work. A place to write. A place to remember who is who. A place to see the shape of the thing. A quiet assistant, only when you ask.
Cardo serif, 62 characters wide, line height set for prose. Your scene list on the left, your codex on the right, your words in the middle.
The envelope was older than she'd expected. Thinner, too. She slid a nail along the seal, and the room held its breath.
Type @ in your manuscript and your cast appears. Characters, locations, items, lore, custom. Everything linked, nothing fussed over.
Chapters become columns, scenes become cards. Move them, color them by status, watch a whole manuscript breathe in one view.
Bring your own OpenRouter key, pick your own model. Pennies a month for most novelists. Nothing sent unless you send it.
A novel is a private argument between a writer and a page. The software should not join the conversation. No notifications. No streaks. No AI pretending to be your co-author. Just the page, the lamp, and the quiet pressure of an unfinished sentence.
What it costs
Two tiers, plainly described. The writing app is free and complete — unlimited novels, no trial, no lock. Add the AI room for $2 a month, and still bring your own OpenRouter key so you pay the model provider at cost. No markup, no surprise invoice.
$0/ forever
The whole writing app. Nothing held back.
$2/ month
Everything in Free, plus the AI room — powered by your own OpenRouter key.
Questions
We started Penflow because we were frustrated customers of the existing tools. The specific things we changed: the app itself is free (no subscription on top of your API bill). Your manuscript lives in your own GitHub repo in plain Markdown (no lock-in, no proprietary format). Autosave + git means a crash cannot cost you more than thirty seconds. The editor works offline. And we do not claim the AI will "generate your novel" — it won't, and we say so.
If you're happy where you are, stay. If any of the above has hurt you before, we built Penflow for you.
Two small numbers, not one big one. Penflow charges $2 a month for the AI room — that covers the feature being there. Beyond that, you bring your own OpenRouter key, and the tokens you use go straight to OpenRouter. We never see them and we never mark them up.
Typical spend on OpenRouter for a novelist writing a few hours a day on Claude Sonnet: $1–$4 per month. So most writers pay $3–$6 all in. You can set a hard ceiling. You can also stay on the free plan and never touch the AI at all.
You lose, at most, the last few seconds. The editor autosaves to local storage on every keystroke. Every natural pause commits to git and pushes to your private GitHub repo. "Days of work lost" is a failure mode we designed around from the first prototype.
Yes. The editor is local-first. Write on a train, in a cabin, at a café with bad wifi. When you come back online, Penflow pushes your commits on its own. No "failed to save," no Notepad-and-paste workaround.
No, and we won't market it that way. Penflow's AI reads the scene you're on, the codex entries it touches, and the outline around it — then answers the question you asked. It is a reader you can summon, not a ghostwriter.
If you want a machine to write a novel, there are tools that promise that. In our experience they ignore your outline and stitch together forgettable paragraphs. We'd rather be honest about what AI is good at, which is reacting to work you've already done.
Because it's the most durable format for prose anyone has agreed on. A plain text file with a few conventions will open in a hundred years. A proprietary binary will not. Your novel should outlive the software that wrote it.
No. Your novel lives in a private GitHub repository under your account. Penflow reads and writes to it on your behalf while the app is open. We don't keep a copy. Close your account and nothing leaves with us.
Not yet. Penflow is built for novelists. The scene model, the codex, the chapter spine, the 62-character reading column — everything is tuned for prose fiction. We'd rather do one thing well.
We're in private beta now, with a small group of novelists working on full-length books. To join the next wave, put your email below and we'll write back.
Join the waitlist
We'll let you in quietly, in small waves. No launch day, no noise, no countdown.