Brainstorm Chat

Brainstorm Chat is built for the messy, exploratory part of writing — the moment when you know something is wrong with a chapter but you have not figured out what, or when you want to test a plot direction without committing to it. It does not write your manuscript for you; it reads what you have written and helps you think out loud.

• •Conversational, multi-turn — keep going as long as the thread is useful
• •Optionally grounded in selected documents from your project
• •Optional Lore context injection so the AI knows your world's rules and characters
• •Multi-session — keep separate conversations per topic, per chapter, per character
• •Available on every project where you have read access

Open Brainstorm Chat from the project workspace. You can start a fresh conversation with no context (free-form chat) or attach one or more documents to ground the conversation.

1. 1

   Open Brainstorm Chat

   Open the AI brainstorm panel from the project workspace.

2. 2

   Select source documents (optional)

   Pick documents you want the AI to read — a single chapter, a scene, or several files. Up to 50 documents per conversation.

3. 3

   Name the conversation (optional)

   Give it a name like "Chapter 7 pacing" or "Anya's motivation". Untitled conversations get "New Conversation" by default.

4. 4

   Start chatting

   Send your first message. The AI replies with full awareness of the documents you attached.

If you have Lore entries in your project, Brainstorm Chat can pull them into the conversation automatically. The AI sees the entries that match what you and it have been talking about, plus their cascade-depth-controlled relations — so the assistant knows about your characters, factions, and locations without you having to paste them in.

• •Lore context injection is enabled per conversation
• •Only public Lore content is sent to the AI — private notes on Lore entries are excluded
• •Cascade depth controls how far the AI follows relationships (e.g. character → their faction → the faction's allies)
• •Lore Progressions filter what the AI sees to facts that are valid up to the current point in the manuscript

Brainstorm Chat uses a multi-session model — you can keep multiple conversations open per project, switch between them at any time, and let each one accumulate its own thread.

• •Up to 20 conversations per project — when you exceed this, the oldest conversation is removed automatically
• •Each conversation keeps a rolling 40-message history; older messages are summarised out of context
• •Switch conversations from the brainstorm panel without losing state
• •Conversations are private to your account; collaborators do not see your brainstorm threads

Brainstorm Chat runs against either Plotiar's hosted AI pool (charged against your weekly Pro credits) or your own API key (charged directly to your provider account).

• •Switch between hosted and BYOK at any time from Account Settings
• •BYOK keys are encrypted at rest and never logged
• •Hosted chat uses Claude Haiku for speed and cost; BYOK lets you choose any supported model

Brainstorm Chat enforces a few hard limits to keep performance and cost predictable.

• •Up to 50 source documents per conversation
• •Up to 10,000 characters per individual message
• •Up to 40 messages of rolling history sent with each request
• •Up to 20 conversations per project (oldest is evicted when you exceed)
• •Hosted chat respects the Pro 250 credits / week cap; BYOK is bounded only by your provider's quota