What Scriptnib is

Scriptnib is where a film is written and where it is planned. The same screenplay that you type becomes the breakdown, the schedule, the call sheets and the budget, because all of it is read off the script instead of typed again.

Most tools do one piece. You write in one program, retype the scenes into a scheduling program, retype the cast into a budgeting program, and retype the day into a call sheet. Every retype is a chance for the three of them to disagree, and on a shoot they always eventually do — the board says scene 14 and the script in somebody's hand says 14A, and the wrong set gets built.

Here, there is one script. Rename a character and the cue in the script, the tag in the breakdown, the sheet in Develop, the actor on the plan and the section on the moodboard all change together. Move a scene onto another shoot day and the call sheet, the Day Out of Days and the sides follow it.

What it covers

• Writing — industry-format screenwriting, importing from Final Draft and PDF, exporting to PDF, Final Draft and Word.
• Development — the story, the beat sheet, the characters and the outline, with scenes written on the card they were outlined on.
• Breakdown — every scene, location, character and prop the film needs.
• Production — the Timeline across the year, the Stripboard, Day Out of Days, call sheets, sides, contacts, revisions and the delivery schedule.
• The budget — the industry chart of accounts, wired to your own shoot days and cast.
• The look — storyboards and moodboards.
• Novels — a smaller side of the product, with chapters, a typeset preview and a paperback-ready PDF.
• AI — a connection to Claude, ChatGPT or any other MCP app, working on your own film.

The road map: idea to delivery

This is the whole journey, in the order it happens, with the part of Scriptnib that does each piece. If you only read one page of this manual, read this one — everything else is detail hanging off it.

1 · Development — figuring out what the film is

Before there are pages there is an argument with yourself about what happens. You write down the idea, work out the shape, decide who these people are, and lay the scenes in order.

In Scriptnib: Develop → Story, Beat sheet, Characters, Outline.

How long: weeks to years. There is no rushing it and no prize for skipping it.

2 · The script — writing the pages

The screenplay itself, in the format the industry reads: scene headings, action, character cues, dialogue. One page is roughly one minute of screen time, which is why a feature is 90–120 pages.

In Scriptnib: Script. Plus Clean up for the mechanical mistakes, Notes for feedback, and Read aloud to hear it.

How long: a first draft in weeks or months; the rewrites are the real work.

3 · The breakdown — what the film is made of

Somebody goes through the script and lists everything it needs: who is in each scene, where it happens, every prop, every costume, every car, every stunt. This is the first moment the script becomes a thing you can cost and schedule.

In Scriptnib: Breakdown → Scenes, Locations, Cast, Elements.

Who does it: the 1st AD or a line producer, often with the heads of department.

4 · The schedule — what order to shoot it in

Films are not shot in the order you watch them. You shoot everything at one location while you have it, all of one actor's scenes while they are available, all the day scenes before the light goes. The Stripboard is where that order gets argued out, one colored strip per scene, dragged into shoot days.

In Scriptnib: Production → Stripboard, then Day Out of Days, which falls out of it automatically.

Who does it: the 1st AD.

5 · The budget — what it costs

Every fee, every rental, every day. Built on the industry's own numbered accounts so that a financier, a bond company and a tax auditor all read it the same way. Scriptnib's budget reads the shoot days, cast count and page count straight off your schedule, so moving the board changes the cost.

In Scriptnib: Production → Budget.

Who does it: the line producer or production manager.

6 · Prep — getting ready

Casting, locations, crew, kit, permits, insurance. The Timeline is where the whole year lives so you can see what has to start when, and Contacts is where everybody's number lives so the call sheet can fill itself in.

In Scriptnib: Production → Timeline and Contacts; Creative → Storyboard and Moodboard for what it will look like.

7 · The shoot — making it

Every day of a shoot runs on two pieces of paper: the call sheet, which says where to be and when, and the sides, which are just the pages being shot that day. When the script changes mid-shoot, the new pages go out on a colored paper so everyone can tell which version they are holding.

In Scriptnib: Production → Call sheets, Sides from a day's ⋯ menu, and Revisions for the colors.

8 · Post and delivery — finishing and handing it over

Editing, sound, music, color, titles. Then delivery: the long list of files and documents a distributor demands before they pay you. It is the least glamorous stage and the one that holds up the money.

In Scriptnib: Production → Deliverables.

Never written or produced before?

Start here and nothing in this manual will be over your head. This page is the craft, not the software — the ideas every other page assumes you already have.

What a screenplay actually is

A screenplay is not a novel and it is not a book of instructions. It is a blueprint. It contains only what an audience can see and hear. Not what somebody is thinking — what they do that shows it.

It has a fixed shape, and the shape is not decoration. A script is read by a hundred people who each need a different thing out of it, and the format lets each of them find their thing in seconds. There are only a few kinds of line:

• Scene heading (also called a slugline) — INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT. Inside or outside (INT/EXT), where, and when. Always capitals.
• Action — what we see. Present tense. Short.
• Character — the name of whoever is about to speak, in capitals, centered.
• Dialogue — what they say.
• Parenthetical — a short direction inside the speech, in brackets. Use sparingly.
• Transition — CUT TO: and the like. Mostly unnecessary.

One page is about one minute of screen time. That is the whole reason the margins are so strict, and it is why a producer can weigh a script in their hand and know roughly what they are holding.

The rule that makes writing easier

Enter a scene as late as you can and leave as early as you can. If two people are going to argue about money, start on the sentence where the argument turns, not on hello. Most first drafts can lose their first and last lines in every scene and get better.

What a producer actually does

A producer answers three questions over and over: what does it cost, who is doing it, and when. Everything on the production side of Scriptnib is one of those three questions.

The words you will keep hearing

• Breakdown — the list of everything the script needs, scene by scene.
• Element — one of those things. A prop, a costume, a car, a stunt.
• Strip — one scene on the schedule board. Its color says day or night, inside or outside.
• Shoot day — one day of filming. A low-budget feature might have 18 to 25 of them.
• Call sheet — the page that tells the whole crew where to be tomorrow and when.
• Sides — just the pages being shot today, folded in a back pocket.
• Eighths — scenes are measured in eighths of a page, because most are shorter than a page. A "2 and 3/8" scene is two and a bit pages.
• Above the line / below the line — above is the people whose deals are negotiated individually (writer, director, producers, lead cast); below is everybody and everything else.
• 1st AD — first assistant director. Runs the schedule and runs the set. Not an assistant.
• Day Out of Days — the chart of which actor works which day. Drives their contracts.

A sensible first project

Do not start with the feature. Write a five-page short: one location, two characters, one thing that goes wrong. Take it all the way through Scriptnib — write it, break it down, schedule it over two days, build a small budget, print a call sheet. You will understand the whole machine in an afternoon, and every page of this manual afterwards will make sense.

Getting around

One sidebar on the left, one screen at a time. If you can find the sidebar you can find everything.

The sidebar

It holds a switch at the top between Screenplays and Novels, then your work, then — once a screenplay is open — the screens inside it:

• Script — the editor.
• Develop — story, beats, characters, outline.
• Breakdown — scenes, locations, cast, elements.
• Creative — storyboard and moodboard.
• Production — timeline, budget, stripboard, Day Out of Days, call sheets, revisions, contacts, deliverables.

Underneath: Search (Ctrl/⌘ + K), Share, Roles, Export and MCP.

On a desktop the sidebar collapses to a narrow rail of icons. On a phone it becomes a drawer you pull out. You will only ever see the screens you have been given — see Roles.

The account menu

At the foot of the sidebar, under your name:

• Appearance — Light, Dark or Auto.
• Highlight color — six dots. Scriptnib Gold is the default; there is also Claude Orange, Indigo Blue, Emerald Green, Blood Red and Goth, which is black in the light and white in the dark. Hover a dot to see its name. It changes the whole app including the logo, and it is remembered in this browser only.
• Account — your name, password and what you write.
• Join with a collaboration code, Help, Contact, and Sign out.

Windows

Every window in the app behaves the same way: Esc closes it, opening another closes the first, leaving the screen closes it, and the keyboard stays inside it while it is open.

On a phone

Everything works on a phone, and some of it is built for one — a call sheet and sides are read on a phone far more often than on a desktop. Anything that is dragged on a desktop has a second way on touch: the Stripboard moves scenes from a strip's ⋯ menu, storyboard panels have ← and → arrows, and character cards have arrows beside the grip.

Develop: story, beats, characters, outline

Four tabs, in the order the thinking happens. None of them are compulsory, and plenty of writers skip straight to the pages — but a film that falls apart in the third act usually fell apart here, before a word was typed.

Story

The free page. The idea, the theme, what it is about underneath what it is about. Write it badly and at length; nobody sees it.

A logline is worth fighting for: one sentence with the character, what they want, and what is in the way. "A deaf teenager must rob the pawnshop her brother owes money to, on the one night the alarm is off." If you cannot write the sentence, the problem is the film, not the sentence.

Beat sheet

A beat is a turn in the story — the moment it stops going one way and starts going another. A beat sheet is the spine: fifteen or so of them across the whole film, each with the stretch of pages it belongs to.

Pick a template at the top of the tab. Each row gives you the beat's name, what the beat is for, and room to write what happens in yours. The dot beside it fills in when you have written that beat — not when a scene exists for it, because a beat you have thought through is done whether or not the scene is written, and that is the order the work happens in.

The page ranges come from your script's real page count once there is a script, so they tighten up as the thing gets written. Nothing to keep up to date.

Characters

One card per character, with their role, their traits and their arc. The arc is broken into beats of its own — what they believe at the start, what cracks it, what they believe at the end.

Press the bar — the name, the whole width of the row — to fold a card away. A film with a real cast is a dozen full-height cards, and you should not have to scroll past four pages of somebody else's arc to reach the person you are writing. Drag the grip, or use the ↑ ↓ arrows, to put them in the order you want; leave it alone and they are ordered by how much they speak.

Press the name itself to rename them. That rewrites every cue in the screenplay, every breakdown tag, the outline cards and the moodboard sections — see Renaming.

Outline

One card per scene, in order. Each card has a line about what happens and which characters are in it. This is where the film gets its shape, and it is the cheapest place to change your mind: moving a card costs nothing, moving a written scene costs a day.

A bar at the top shows two kinds of progress on one track — a faint gold band for scenes you have drafted and not yet placed, solid gold for the ones that are in the screenplay. 6 of 14 in the screenplay · 3 drafted.

Writing a scene on its card

Write the scene on a card unfolds the screenplay editor underneath it, with the caret already in the first empty line. Tab changes what a line is and Enter starts the next, exactly as in the main editor. Put it in the screenplay places it in the outline's own order. Done writing folds it away.

One card at a time, which is also how many scenes a person writes at a time. Which card you had open is remembered while you are in Develop.

The editor

Type. The format looks after itself.

Tab and Enter

These two keys are the whole thing:

• Tab changes what the current line is — scene heading, action, character, dialogue, parenthetical, transition. Press it again to keep cycling.
• Enter starts the next line, and picks the type that usually follows. After a character cue you get dialogue. After dialogue you get a character cue, because that is what a writer reaches for next.

The bottom bar always says what the current line is, and shows a tip — Tab to change it · Enter for the next — which fades away after you have seen it three times.

Things it does for you

• Scene headings autocomplete. Type INT. and it offers locations you have already used, and times of day.
• Parentheticals get their brackets automatically. Typing ( gives you () with the caret inside.
• Character cues go to capitals and autocomplete from who is already in the script.
• Page breaks are real. The editor paginates the way the PDF does, so the page count you see is the page count you send.

Scene numbers

Off by default, because a script in development does not want them. Turn them on with Number scenes in the ⋯ menu on the screenplay once you are heading toward a shoot — the breakdown, the stripboard and every call sheet are easier to talk about when scenes have numbers. Renumber scenes, beside it, numbers them 1, 2, 3… again in the order they are now, and offers Undo. Anybody who can write the screenplay can do both.

Dual dialogue

Two people talking at once, printed side by side. It is off until a screenplay asks for it — a switch in Project settings. Switching it on changes nothing on the page; it only puts a Dual button in the bottom bar when the caret is on a character cue with a whole speech above it to sit beside.

You mark pairs one at a time, deliberately. Two people talking at once is a decision, never a guess. It prints side by side in the PDF, in Word, and as a real dual-dialogue block in Final Draft.

The scene picker

In the bottom bar: how many scenes there are, and a list to jump to one. Filterable. On a feature, this is how you move around.

Saving

It saves itself as you type. The bottom bar says Unsaved, Saving… or ✓ Saved, and it is honest about which. See Versions for how to get something back.

Bringing a script in

If the script already exists somewhere else, you do not retype it.

Final Draft (.fdx)

The clean route. Import Final Draft on the home screen. Every element type comes across correctly because an .fdx file labels them. If the file has scene numbers, they come too and scene numbering is switched on for you. Dual dialogue comes across as dual dialogue.

PDF

Works, and is a guess. A PDF has no idea what a character cue is — Scriptnib works it out from the margins, the capitals and the spacing, which is how everybody does it, and it gets the great majority right. Expect to fix a few lines. A revision slip behind the title page is skipped.

After a PDF import, run Clean up first. It will catch most of what the importer got wrong in one pass.

Plain text

For novels. A Markdown heading — # One, ## Part Two — is read as a chapter.

Starting from nothing

New screenplay in the sidebar. An empty home screen offers all three at once: New, Import Final Draft, Import PDF.

Notes and feedback

Notes sit beside the script, not over it. A director's pass is thirty notes, and the flow that matters most should be the best one.

Leaving a note

Highlight the words in the editor and press Note. The note is pinned to that line and to those words, and shows as a gold bar in the margin beside it. Notes in the editor's top bar — between the headphones and the moon — opens the pane on the right.

Show me on a note finds the line and marks it, with the note still beside it. You never lose your place to read a note.

Notes from people without an account

A Comment share link lets somebody read the script and leave notes on it without signing up — see Share. Their notes arrive in the same pane with their name on them. Somebody on a Comment link only ever sees the notes left through links and the replies to them, never your production notes.

Replies

Any note can be replied to, and the replies group under it. Deleting a note takes its replies with it, because an orphaned reply to a question nobody can read is worse than nothing.

Clean up

Everything wrong with a script in a way a rule can describe. The rules below have no AI anywhere near them — they cost nothing to run and do the same thing every time. One section at the foot of the screen does use SI, and it is clearly marked and never runs on its own.

Where: the ⋯ menu on the screenplay → Clean up.

Names

Names that drifted apart: MARIA and MARÍA, KITCHEN and THE KITCHEN, a cue typed one letter wrong. Accents, case, spacing, punctuation and a leading article all fold away. An exact match is reported as certain; one character apart is reported as a question. Short names (MAX / MAC) and names that share a scene are left alone, because those are usually two real people.

Punctuation

Runs of spaces, a space before a comma, four dots. Straight quotes are deliberately not touched in a screenplay — Courier is a typewriter face, so curling them is taste rather than a correction. Novels have their own Fix quotes.

Formatting

Headings, cues and transitions not in capitals. INT without its dot. A parenthetical missing its brackets. A heading typed as action. A parenthetical typed as dialogue.

Every fix is shown with before and after and a count, ticked or unticked, and applied in one press. All of it is an ordinary save, so Version History undoes it.

Analyze for errors

A second kind of finding, behind a button, for things a rule can spot but only you can settle:

• A scene heading with no time of day — which matters, because the scheduler falls through to DAY and you get a night scene silently booked as a day one.
• A scene with nothing in it.
• Dialogue with no cue above it.
• The same character cued twice running.
• A character who speaks exactly once.

Each can be cleared rather than fixed. A clear is stored against a fingerprint of the scene, so rewriting that scene asks the question again, and Show the N I cleared brings them all back.

SI Clean up — what each line is

A rule can put the capitals on a scene heading. What it cannot tell is that a line typed as action is really a character cue. That is the usual damage from a PDF import, and it is worse than it looks: everything downstream reads the kind of a line, not the look of it. The Breakdown reads cues, the Stripboard and the Day Out of Days read headings. A line of the wrong kind is not untidy — it is invisible to the whole production side of the app.

Check the formatting, at the foot of Clean up, reads the script in parts and says which lines are the wrong kind: a cue typed as action, speech typed as action, a heading that is not one, a transition that was never marked as one. You get a list with the before and the after on every row, and nothing is changed until you tick it.

Like the rules above it, all of it is an ordinary save, so Version History undoes it.

SI is switched on per account. If it has not been switched on for yours, this section is not on the screen at all.

Read aloud

Hear it. Dialogue that reads fine on the page is often unsayable out loud, and nothing finds that faster than a voice.

Where: the headphones in the editor's top bar.

It reads straight through and stops at the end of the script, highlighting the line being read. ⏪ and ⏩ step a line; the scene buttons step a scene. The progress line fills as the audio plays.

Voice casting

A voice per character, from thirteen. The default narrator is Cedar. Open Voice casting from the ⋯ menu on the screenplay. Parentheticals are used as delivery directions — (barely audible) actually changes how the line is read.

Versions, locking and the way back

Nothing you do here is unrecoverable, and it is worth knowing exactly how before you need to know.

Versions

Save a version and Versions are in the ⋯ menu on the screenplay. It keeps the newest ten explicit saves, each restorable. A restore keeps what it replaced, as a version called before restore, so a restore can itself be undone.

Version history reads in English — Saved, Created, Restored — with a time as well as a date, because two saves on one day are otherwise identical.

Novels keep versions too, in the same window, with the same limit.

Lock

Locking a screenplay (⋯ → Lock) makes it read-only for everybody including you. It is for a script you have finished with and do not want to touch by accident. It is not the same as issuing a revision, which is a publication.

Trash and Archive

Deleted screenplays go to Trash first and can be restored. Archive is for work you have finished with but want to keep out of the way.

Backups

The whole site is backed up every night, with the storyboard drawings, book pictures and title logos alongside. That is a safety net for the service, not a substitute for your own copies — Export whatever you would be upset to lose.

Renaming a character or a location

Renaming is the furthest-reaching thing anybody does to a screenplay, and doing it by hand is how a project quietly breaks.

Change MAEVE to ORLA with find-and-replace and you have moved the script — and left the breakdown tags, the character sheet in Develop, the outline cards, the actor playing the part on the plan, and the moodboard sections all pointing at somebody who is no longer in the film.

So rename in one place and everything moves together. Press a character's name in Develop → Characters, or use the rename on the Breakdown. The window says what it is about to do before it does it, and Version History is the way back.

Merging is refused

Renaming MAEVE onto an existing ORLA would fold two people into one and quietly lose one of their two sets of notes, their arc and their traits. Scriptnib refuses it for cast, before anything is touched.

Locations are not guarded, because two spellings of one place is a real thing you often want to fix, and the Breakdown already has an alias for it.

What a breakdown is

A breakdown is the list of everything the script needs, scene by scene. It is the moment a screenplay stops being a story and becomes a thing you can cost, schedule and actually go and shoot.

Somebody reads the script with a marker in hand and pulls out every noun that has to be bought, borrowed, built, hired, cast, dressed, rigged or driven. A lantern. A fallen branch. MAEVE. A 1987 Volvo. Rain. Each one goes in a category, and each category is a department's problem.

Once that list exists, everything else follows from it. The props department works off the props. The 1st AD schedules around which actors are in which scene. The budget costs the vehicles. The call sheet knows who to call tomorrow.

The thirteen categories

These colors are a filmmaking standard, not a Scriptnib choice. A first AD reads them the same way on paper anywhere in the world, so they are not restyled and their meanings do not change.

• Cast — speaking parts. Worked out from the script's own cues, and taggable by hand for somebody who appears without a line.
• Extras / Background — people with no lines.
• Stunts — anything with a stunt coordinator in it.
• Props — anything an actor handles.
• Set Dressing — anything that makes the place look like the place but nobody touches.
• Wardrobe — costume.
• Makeup / Hair — including prosthetics and blood.
• Vehicles / Animals — both, because both need a wrangler and a permit.
• Special Effects — done in camera. Rain, wind, fire, squibs.
• Visual Effects — done afterwards.
• Sound / Music — anything that has to be recorded, cleared or played on set.
• Special Equipment — crane, drone, underwater housing, Steadicam.
• Production Notes — anything that does not fit and somebody has to know.

Tagging well

How you name a tag decides whether the breakdown is useful or a mess. This is the single place where five minutes of care saves a week.

Tag the thing, not the sentence

The name is what gets highlighted in the script and what the props department reads off a list. So it has to be the thing.

Description goes in the note on the tag, where it belongs. Tarnished; must open. A description in the name lights up whichever loose word happens to match — "gone", "table" — instead of the thing itself.

Four words at most

And the main word has to actually be in the scene. Scriptnib enforces this when an AI app adds tags, and it is just as good a rule by hand.

Be consistent

If it is "Silver locket" in scene 3 it is "Silver locket" in scene 40 — not "the locket" and not "Maeve's necklace". The whole point is that one item gathers all its scenes under it. Two spellings make two items, and the props department buys two lockets.

How to tag

Highlight the words in the script pane on the right of any Breakdown tab and press Tag. The scene comes from where the selection sits and the name is the words themselves. Pick a category.

You can also add a tag that is not literally in the script — rain that the scene implies, a permit somebody will need — by adding it directly on the scene's sheet.

SI Tag — the whole film in one pass

SI Tag sits beside Tags in the script pane. It reads every scene on its own and proposes what the shoot needs, then hands you a list to tick. Nothing goes into the Breakdown until you approve it, and only what is still ticked.

It says how many scenes and roughly what it costs before it starts, because a feature is a few minutes of work. It carries on if you leave. Close the laptop, come back tomorrow, and the list is waiting — the pass runs on Scriptnib rather than in the page.

A proposal is judged by the same rule a tag you type is judged by, so a description or a word that is not in the scene never reaches your list. Cast is left alone: the app already knows who speaks.

SI is switched on per account. If it has not been switched on for yours, the button is not there.

Fixing a bad batch

Tags can be renamed, re-noted and re-categorized by hand on the Elements tab, or removed. Removing a tag never touches the script.

The four tabs

One set of tags, seen four ways. Nothing is entered twice; these are four questions asked of the same list.

The script pane

All four tabs have the script on the right, read-only, with every tag highlighted in its category color. Press a scene — or a scene in a location's or a character's list — and it is found and marked in the pane rather than jumped to, so you can keep reading around it. It is a switch in the tab bar, and it is remembered. On a phone it stacks underneath.

Scenes

Every scene with its heading, its page, its length in eighths, and a sheet of everything in it grouped by department. This is the view a department head is handed.

A scene's sheet carries its shoot day as a button — Day 2 · Tue, Jun 8 — which takes you to its strip on the board. The board's ⋯ has See what is in it going the other way. The two boards are one script seen two ways, so each hands you to the other.

Locations

Every place in the script, with its scenes, its pages and who is in them. This is what you hand a location scout.

Two spellings of one place — KITCHEN and THE KITCHEN — can be given an alias so they count as one without changing the script.

Cast

Every character with their scenes, their pages and their cast number. The numbers matter: a Day Out of Days chart and a call sheet both refer to actors by number, and the numbering comes from here.

A character tagged into a scene they have no line in — a reaction, an appearance in the opening image — counts as being in that scene, which is what puts them on the strips, the call sheet and their own Day Out of Days row. Getting that wrong is how an actor is not called for a day they are needed.

Elements

Everything the shoot needs, by department, with the scenes each item is in. This is the list that gets sent out — props to props, wardrobe to wardrobe.

Rename, re-note or re-categorize an item here and every scene it is in follows.

Filters

The filter row narrows by day or night, inside or outside, a cast member, a location, or free text. It affects what the breakdown exports print, so filter first and then export.

Getting the breakdown out

Four documents come off the breakdown, each written for a different person. They are all in the Export window.

The breakdown sheet's Day/Night comes from the strip, so a scene marked CONTINUOUS reads NIGHT when the scene before it was night. That is what an AD needs; it is not what the heading says.

Contacts

Everybody and everywhere the film points at. Do this early: the call sheet fills itself in from here, so an hour spent on Contacts saves an hour on every call sheet after it.

Where: Production → Contacts.

Five kinds, and they are not interchangeable

• Crew — people working on the film.
• Cast — actors. A cast contact plays one of the script's own characters, picked from the breakdown. The call sheet then prints the actor's name and number beside the part.
• Extras — background.
• Locations — a place, with an address. A location contact can stand in for the script's own scene headings, matched on the heading's words.
• Companies — suppliers, hire houses, the insurer.

Cast and crew are listed separately and called at different times, which is why they are two kinds rather than one.

Find this place

On a location contact, Find this place looks the address up once against OpenStreetMap and keeps the answer. That one press is what gives the call sheet the light and the weather for that day, in the clock where the shoot is.

The Stripboard

The order you shoot in. This is the single most important document in prep, and it is the one that decides what the film costs.

Where: Production → Stripboard.

Why not just shoot it in order

Because it would cost three times as much. If scenes 2, 19 and 44 are all in the same kitchen, you shoot all three while you have the kitchen — one day's location fee instead of three, one lighting setup instead of three, and the owner only inconvenienced once. The same goes for an actor flown in for four days, for a night exterior that needs the rain machine, for anything expensive.

So the schedule is a long argument about grouping, and a strip is one scene you can move.

Reading a strip

Each scene is a strip carrying its number, its heading, its length in eighths, its cast numbers and a line about what happens. The color is the standard one and does not mean anything else:

• White — day interior
• Yellow — day exterior
• Blue — night interior
• Green — night exterior

Across a board those four colors tell you the shape of the shoot from the other side of the room — how many nights, how much exterior, where the weather risk is.

Building the board

Shoot days sit on top, with Not scheduled underneath. Drag a strip onto a day. On a phone or an iPad, use the ⋯ on a strip — dragging does not fire for touch, so every strip has a second way.

Add a day, or add a break. A break is not a shoot day: it is a day off, a company move, a travel day or a turnaround. It carries its own label — edit it in place, so it can read Company move — Dublin to Wicklow rather than just "Day off" — and it takes no day number, so putting one in moves every date after it without renumbering the days.

Inside a day, a banner is a strip of words between the scenes — Company move → Harbour, Lunch, Night work begins — the way a stripboard has always carried them. Put one in with + Banner, or with Banner after this scene on a strip's ⋯. Its kind gives it its color; its words are yours, typed straight onto it. Drag it like a strip, or use its ⋯ to change its kind, move it, or take it out. A banner is not a scene: it moves no date and adds no pages. It prints on the Stripboard and the One-liner.

Settings

The bar at the top: the first day of photography (every date on the board, the call sheets and the Day Out of Days counts from it), pages per day you are aiming at, and whether weekends are skipped.

Auto-schedule

The last button, and deliberately plain. It never puts day and night work on the same shoot day — the day work comes first and the nights run together after it, so the unit turns its clock round once. Scenes at a set stay together, a day takes at most three sets (two company moves), and the next set is the one that shares the most cast, so actors are not held between their days. Each company move it makes is a banner you can take out again. A day you build by hand that mixes the two is flagged Day & night. It is a first pass, not an answer — it knows nothing about your actors' availability, the weather, or the fact that the hardest scene should not be on day one. It throws away any order you have already made, so it asks first.

A rain day, and a scene shot over two days

No shoot goes to plan. It rains on day ten, the light goes before the last setup, a scene gets half done. The board has to say what really happened, and everything after it has to follow.

Where: the ⋯ on a strip and the ⋯ on a shoot day, on the Stripboard.

Wrap the day

At the end of each shoot day, Wrap the day from its ⋯. A wrapped day is history: it keeps the date it was shot even if the first day of photography moves, nothing can be moved on or off it, and Auto-schedule leaves it and every day before it exactly as they are, laying out only what is left. The strips on it carry a tick and count as shot. If a scene on it is later cut from the script, the day still shows it, struck through, because it was shot and it was paid for. Unwrap the day takes it off again if it was a mistake.

Half a scene

A scene that ran out of day is split, from the strip's ⋯ → Split it. Say how much of it was shot — 1 1/8 of a 1 4/8 scene, say — and where the rest goes: the same day, another day, or back under Not scheduled. The first part keeps what was shot and the second part takes the rest. Each part is its own strip with its own share of the pages, so every day's page count stays true.

Only the last part follows the script's real length. If the scene is rewritten longer, what is still to shoot gets longer; what is in the can does not change. A scene can split into eight parts at most, and Put the parts back together joins them again, as long as none of it is shot yet.

The call sheet prints pt 2 of 2 under the scene number. The sides print the whole scene, once, because an actor needs all of it to play part of it, and the top line says which part is today's.

A day lost to the weather

If nothing could be shot, Lost to weather on the day's ⋯ puts a Weather day break in where the day was. That day and every day after it move on one date, with their scenes still on them, and the call sheets and the Day Out of Days follow. If only some of it was lost, move those strips instead, and split the one that was half done.

And the Timeline

When the board's last day moves, the Timeline offers to move the end of principal photography with it. It asks rather than doing it, because a producer may have float to absorb it.

Day Out of Days

Which actor works which day. Nobody fills this in — it falls out of the Stripboard the moment the board exists.

Where: Production → Day Out of Days.

A grid: every cast member down the side, every shoot day across the top. Each cell says what that actor is doing that day:

• SW — Start Work. Their first day.
• W — Work.
• H — Hold. Not shooting, but not released either, so still being paid.
• WF — Work, Finish. Their last day.
• SWF — all on one day.

Why it decides the money

An actor is paid from their first day to their last, including the holds. An actor who works day 2 and day 19 is paid for eighteen days whether or not they do anything in between. Moving one scene so that both of their days are in the same week can save more than everything else you do to the budget.

That is what this chart is for: you look at it, see somebody strung across three weeks for two days of work, and go back to the board.

The totals at the end — work days, hold days, total days — are what casting and the budget are built on. Produce the PDF before you negotiate.

Call sheets

The one page that runs the day. Where to be, when, what we are shooting, who is in it, and what to do if somebody gets hurt.

Where: Production → Call sheets. A card per shoot day; open one and it takes the width.

Almost all of it is already known

The Stripboard says which day and when. The breakdown says which scenes, who is in them and how many pages. Contacts says where the location is and who holds the keys. So the only things you type are the things the script cannot answer:

• Crew call — when the crew arrives.
• Shooting call — when the camera is expected to roll. Usually an hour or so later.
• Lunch and wrap.
• Unit base, parking, nearest hospital, and notes.

A location contact standing in for one of the day's sets turns up under From Contacts with a one-press "use this address".

The arrangement is not up for improvement

Nobody reads a call sheet. They look at the part of the page where their answer lives. So it is the conventional arrangement, everywhere: production office top left; the title and the general crew call boxed and bigger than anything else, top center; the date, Day n of N and the rest of the clock top right. Then who to ring, the light and weather, hospital, parking and basecamp, the safety line, the scenes, the cast. At the foot, stand-ins and background on the left, what each department needs on the right. Tomorrow and the day after in full.

The crew list is on page two, with the phone numbers and the sign-offs, because page one answers "where am I and when" and a hundred names do not belong between the location and the schedule. It is grouped by department — Camera, Grip & Electric, Sound, Art and the rest — read off the job each contact already carries, so a Gaffer lands under Grip & Electric and a 1st AC under Camera without anybody typing a department.

The light and the weather

Two different things wearing one name.

• The light — first light, sunrise, golden hour, sunset, last light. This is arithmetic, so it is as true for a shoot in 2029 as for tomorrow, and it is the half you actually schedule around.
• The weather — a real forecast, which runs about nine days out. Further than that the sheet says so rather than inventing something, which is fine, because a call sheet goes out the night before.

Both need the location to have been placed with Find this place in Contacts. A day whose own location has not been placed borrows one that has, and the sheet names whose light it is printing.

The revision color

If the script has been issued, the call sheet fills in which color is current by itself — because "are you on the pink?" is asked on set every day of the week and the script already knows. Typing it in by hand still wins.

Sending it out

The Email button on a call sheet sends the call sheet, the sides or both as PDFs. It goes to everyone on the call sheet — the cast in that day's scenes, the crew and any extras contact — or to whoever you tick. The addresses come from Contacts and nowhere else, so somebody without one is listed but cannot be ticked; add their email in Contacts first. Each person gets their own email, so nobody sees anyone else's address, and a reply comes to you. You can add a line, such as bring rain gear.

Sides

Just the pages being shot today. Two or three sheets, sent out the night before, and the only thing most of a unit reads in the morning.

Where: a shoot day's ⋯ on the Stripboard → Sides for this day, or the Export window under Shoot day.

They are the script's own pages, not the scenes typed out again. An actor finds page 42 in the script they have been learning from, so a side keeps page 42's number, its scene numbers and its revision marks. The pages come in the order the day shoots, not the order they are written, because that is the order the day happens in. Any other scene on those pages is struck through with an X: still there to read around, plainly not today's.

The top line says the title, SIDES, which day of how many, and the date, and the foot of each sheet counts the bundle — 2 of 4 — so nobody walks off with half of it. If a revision color has gone out, it is on the top line too — an actor handed pages asks which color they are on before anything else.

Half size, in the Export window, puts two pages side by side on one sheet to be cut down the middle: the small sides a unit keeps in a pocket.

The Timeline

The whole film across the year. The Stripboard is the AD's instrument; this is the producer's.

Where: Production → Timeline.

Five stages, and they are not yours to change

Development, Pre-production, Production, Post-production, Distribution. Every film has them, in that order, so they are the rows — nothing adds, removes, renames, reorders or recolors them.

What you put on it is a job

A job is a thing that happens over a stretch of time, not a person who does it: Color grade, not Colorist. Screenplay and Script doctoring, not Writer. There are 214 of them in one alphabetical list, and every one is offered in every stage, because sound design in development is a real decision.

A job's color is the stage it is in — nothing picks it and there is nothing to pick. Brightness is progress, which follows the dates until you move the slider yourself.

Starting one

A new plan is not blank. Give it a first day of photography — taken off the Stripboard when it knows one — and the year lays itself out: eighteen pieces of work, fifteen sections, five milestones, all movable. Start again clears the year, asking first, and keeps contacts and call sheets, which are not part of the year.

Zoom and move

Year, month or week. Drag the chart like a map; the wheel zooms, holding the date under the pointer still. Zoomed right out, a stage is one lane however much is in it, so five rows hold the whole film.

What waits for what

Anything can wait for anything. Late pushes; early never pulls. Slack is real, so a six-week slip into fourteen weeks of float moves nothing at all — which is the honest answer and the one a producer needs. When something does move, the app says what moved and waits to be told.

Milestones

The only markers on the chart. Financing closed, cast locked, first day, picture lock, delivery. There is deliberately no "today" line and no shaded shoot band — both were louder than the work behind them.

The Budget

What the film costs, in the form every financier, completion bond company and tax auditor already knows how to read.

Where: Production → Budget.

The numbers are the industry's, not ours

1100 is always Story & Rights. 3300 is always Camera. This is the standard chart of accounts, and a line producer, a studio's business affairs and a tax-credit auditor all read it the same way. Do not renumber, rename or reorder the accounts. 45 accounts, 267 sub-accounts.

Four levels

1. Topsheet — the one page everybody actually reads.
2. Account — 1100 Story & Rights.
3. Sub-account — 1101 Writers.
4. Detail line — Story / 1st draft / Rewrite / Polish.

You write a budget at the line level. The levels above add themselves up.

A line is Qty × Rate × X, plus Misc

The columns are Qty · Unit · Rate · X · Misc · Sub-Total · Budget $, in that order, because that is the order they are in everywhere else.

• Qty — how many units. 4.
• Unit — of what. weeks.
• Rate — per unit. 2,500.
• X — a multiplier. 2 cameras, 3 people.
• Misc — a flat amount on top.

Budget $ carries the sub-account's total and prints on its last line — which is why the column looks sparse and is correct.

The part other budgeting programs cannot do

This one knows the film. Nobody retypes the shoot days. Type a word in capitals into a Qty or X cell and it reads the real number off your own schedule and breakdown:

So a line reads 1 × SHOOT days × 650 and stays right. When the board moves, the budget says what moved and what it costs, and waits to be told. It never silently rewrites itself.

PREP, WRAP and POST are yours to set — the film cannot know them. The two lists are labeled Read off the film and Yours to set so you can see which is which.

Typing over a wired global by hand unwires it, and says so, rather than being overwritten the next time the board moves.

A budget started before the board was built reads 0 in all of them. Open the budget and it says The film has moved with Take it beside it — one press and every wired figure is right. An AI app can do the same in one step (edit_budget), which is the answer when a budget read over MCP says 0 shoot days on a film that plainly has them.

Fringes

A fringe is what gets paid on top of a wage — pension, health, payroll taxes, union contributions. It is a percentage of an account's labor, and it rolls up per account.

A fringe is paid on people, not on things. Every line that is a hire, a purchase or an allowance is marked, and the fringe base skips it. Nobody pays pension and health on a lens, and a budget that does is wrong by thousands in the direction that loses an argument with a bond company. Mark every piece of kit.

Contingency and the bond

A contingency is money set aside for things going wrong — usually 10%. A completion bond is an insurance policy guaranteeing the film gets finished; the bond company charges a percentage and will read this budget line by line. The bond is written on the budget including its contingency, which is the convention.

Reading the topsheet

The totals are not a simple running sum, and this trips people up. Total above and below-the-line is above-the-line plus production only. Post, other, the contingency and the bond are the below-the-line other block under it. The grand total is those two. That is the convention, not an oversight.

Who can see it

The budget is the only page given to a person rather than to a job. Every fee on the film is in it — the director's, the cast's, everybody's — so no job carries it, the writer included. The owner always has it; everyone else is ticked on one at a time in Roles. Putting somebody on a different job clears it.

Tax incentives

Many places pay you back a share of what you spend there. It is often the difference between a film happening and not happening.

Where: the foot of the Budget.

It is off until you say you are claiming one, because most independent films are not.

Scriptnib quotes no percentages, on purpose

Eight territories are offered — Puerto Rico, Georgia, California, New York, New Mexico, British Columbia, Ontario, and Somewhere else — and each carries only its shape: whether residents and non-residents are paid at different rates, whether there is a cap per person, what counts as above-the-line, which uplifts exist.

No rates. An early version had rates taken off aggregator sites and they were wrong — film.ca.gov says 20% where the aggregators said 35. A producer who raises money on a number this app invented has a real problem. So every territory names the authority and says in plain words what to go and ask them.

Marking lines

Each line cycles through the flags that exist for the territory you picked — out of state, non-resident, loan-out — on one tap. The topsheet then shows qualified spend, the estimated credit and the net.

Fringes follow the labor they are paid on, so they qualify where it qualifies.

Storyboard

Shots, in order, with a drawing each. What the camera actually does.

Where: Creative → Storyboard.

What a storyboard is for

A scene in a script says two people argue in a kitchen. A storyboard says: wide on the door, over her shoulder, cut to his hands, push in. It is where the director works out the film's grammar before a crew is standing there at £900 an hour waiting to be told.

You do not board everything. Board the scenes that are hard: anything with stunts, effects, a crowd, a car, or a piece of cutting the whole film hangs on. A dialogue scene in one room rarely needs it.

Shots

Scenes come straight from the script. + Shot on a scene adds a panel. Each one takes a drawing and a line about it — the size, the move, the lens, whatever you need to say.

The letter comes from the order: 1A, 1B, 1C. So moving a panel renames the rest automatically, and there is nothing to keep in step.

Pictures

Drop a picture on a panel, or press it to choose one. Anything works — a drawing, a photograph of a sketch, a frame grab, a reference still. They are shrunk in your browser before they are uploaded, so a phone photo does not cost you a slow upload or a megabyte of storage.

Moving panels

Drag the grip, or use ← and →. The arrows work from a keyboard too, and on a phone or iPad the grip is hidden and the arrows are the way — dragging never fires for touch.

Folding and finding

Press a scene's whole header to fold it. The bar at the top has a scene picker — the same list the editor's has — and Fold them all, which is one switch rather than two buttons: it turns itself on when you fold the last scene by hand. Picking a scene from the list opens it if it was folded and marks it for a moment so you can see where you landed.

When the script changes

A board whose scene has been rewritten says Scene changed with a quiet wash over it. One click clears it. A deleted scene keeps its drawings rather than losing them.

The PDF

Six panels to a landscape page, three across, a scene at a time. A shot not yet drawn prints as an empty frame with its line underneath — which is useful, because that is the version you hand somebody to fill in.

Moodboard

What the film looks like, on a canvas rather than in a list.

Where: Creative → Moodboard.

Several boards, not one

The look of a film is not one board. The whole picture; a character; a sequence; a palette. Each is a free canvas you pan and zoom like a map.

Four things go on it

• Picture — drop a file on the board. A see-through PNG gets no card around it, because a cut-out is the thing itself rather than a picture of it.
• Note — grey paper, never a yellow sticky. The box grows as you write and never scrolls.
• Color — three sliders: which color, how much of it, how light. The hex can be copied out and typed in, and the eyedropper reads a color off any picture on the board.
• Section — a frame you put things inside, and the only thing that carries a tag.

Tagging a section

A section can be about one of the breakdown's Elements (every category but Cast), a Cast member, or a Location. So a section can be about the lantern as readily as about MAEVE — which is usually what a moodboard is for.

Asking the same question of every picture inside the section would be asking it forty times, so a card inside a section is already said to be about what the section is about. Show at the foot filters the board on that.

The tag is the name in its own category color — no box, no bubble. A lit rectangle behind two words is louder than the section it names.

Lining things up

Dragging a card lines it up with the edges of the cards already there, and only then falls back to the grid. Lining things up is most of what making a moodboard is, and a grid alone does not do it — two cards can both be on the grid and still not be level.

The only gold on the canvas is the alignment line while something is actually moving. Nothing wears a resting outline.

Design: the dossier and the poster

The two things a film is sent out on before it exists.

Where: Creative → Design.

What a dossier is

A dossier (a pitch deck, a lookbook) is what a producer sends a financier, a fund, a festival lab or an actor's agent: a short widescreen document that says what the film is and why it should be made. Nobody reads a hundred pages to decide whether to read a hundred pages, so this comes first. The template has the pages they expect, in the order they expect them:

• Cover — the title over the key art, and who wrote it.
• Logline — the film in one sentence, on a page of its own.
• Synopsis — the whole story, ending included. The reader is deciding whether to make it, not whether to watch it.
• Director's statement — why this film, and why this person.
• Characters — a page for each: who they are, their age and where they are from, who plays them, and a grid of nine pictures.
• Tone and style — what it feels like, the themes, the genre and the length.
• Image spread — stills, edge to edge, no words.
• Team — who is making it.
• Budget & financing — what it costs, what is in place and what is sought.
• Contact — who to call.

It opens already filled in with what the screenplay knows: the title and writers, the logline, genre and theme from Develop, the characters who are in the most scenes and the actors playing them, the crew on Contacts. What it cannot know is a gap in square brackets. Every heading is ordinary text, so a dossier can be written in any language. + Page adds any of these pages again, or a blank one. Blank, on the first screen, starts with nothing at all.

The poster

A one-sheet: who presents it, the key art, the title, the tagline, the date, and the billing block — the tall, narrow credits at the foot. 27 × 40 is the cinema one-sheet, 24 × 36 the common print, 4:5 the size for social.

Designing it

Everything on a page is a block you can move, resize, restyle or delete. Drag to move — it lines up with the page's edges and middle and with the blocks around it. Double-click text to type. Pick a font from the list, which shows each one in its own face. Theme changes every font and color at once, except the ones you have set by hand. Mirror the layout swaps a page left for right. Undo is Ctrl+Z (⌘Z).

Remove background on a picture cuts the subject out, hair and busy backdrops included, and leaves the rest see-through. Put the background back undoes it, because the original is kept.

Sending it

PDF opens it ready to print at its real page size; choose Save as PDF. Share makes a link anyone can read and print with no account, and nobody can change. Stop sharing and the link dies; share again and it is a new address.

Share: links and codes

Giving somebody the screenplay to read, with no account and no setup.

Where: Share, in the sidebar. Owner only.

Two things, and only two

• Read — they can read it. That is all.
• Comment — they can read it and leave notes on lines.

A link needs no account. A collaboration code is the same thing as a short code somebody types in under Join with a collaboration code.

Revoking a link stops it working immediately.

What a reader sees

The script, in a clean page, with a Day / Night switch. And two symbols in the corner, no words:

• A gold flag — bookmarks where they are.
• A curved arrow to its left — takes them back to it. It is hidden until there is a bookmark.

Somebody sent 110 pages reads it over two evenings, and there was no way back to where they stopped. The unit is a line, not a page — where you stopped is a speech, not a sheet. The bookmarked line carries a gold bar down its right edge.

It is kept in that browser, keyed to the link, so nothing of theirs reaches the server — and it does not follow them to another device. That is the bargain.

Roles: who is on the film

An account, a job, and which pages they can open.

Where: Roles, in the sidebar, under Share. Owner only.

The unit is the page — the thing somebody opens

There are fourteen: Script, Notes, Develop, Breakdown, then the eight Production tabs and the two Creative ones. The four Breakdown tabs are one page, because they are one set of tags seen four ways and nobody gives somebody Cast but not Locations.

A job is just a named set of pages

Seven come with every film — Writer, Co-writer, Director, Producer, 1st AD, Script supervisor, Reader — and picking one fills the switches in a press. From then on the switches are the truth and the job is only the label it started from.

A real crew does not fit presets: a line producer who also runs the contacts, somebody who is both the writer and the director. So you set the pages.

+ Create a job at the foot of the list makes a job of your own out of whatever is currently ticked — because the way people write a job is by setting one person up and then wanting it again. Deleting a job takes nothing from anybody already on it; only the label falls back.

Reading the window

Each person folds to one line — Niamh Doherty · 1st AD · 6 pages — which is what you opened the window to check. Press them to open the list. One person open at a time.

A page is its name and a dot: gold when they have it, a hairline ring when they do not. Both states are drawn on purpose — a row showing nothing reads as unavailable rather than as a decision somebody made.

The two that carry a warning

• Budget — every fee on the film. It is not part of any job and is ticked per person; see The Budget.
• Revisions — sending the script out on a color locks pages and cannot be taken back. It is the writer's alone; a co-writer brought on to write does not get it.

Revisions and the colors

Once a script is out with a crew, it stops being a draft and becomes a publication. This is the fifty-year-old system for keeping a hundred people on the same page — literally.

Where: Production → Revisions.

This is not Version history

A version is your own save — the newest ten, restorable, in the project's ⋯ menu. A revision is a publication. The two never share a word on screen.

The color sequence

White, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Green, Goldenrod, Buff, Salmon, Cherry, then Second White. Each issue takes the next one. On set, you ask "are you on the pink?" and the answer is instant, from across a car park, with no version numbers involved.

What issuing does

From the moment you press Issue, the pages are held. "See page 42" is written on a call sheet, in a continuity report, in an actor's notes and in the script supervisor's book — so page 42 has to keep meaning page 42 for the rest of the schedule.

So each issued page keeps its own sheet. Write into page 42 and the overflow becomes 42A, then 42B. Write into 42A and it becomes 42AA — because re-lettering the run would move pages sixty people are already holding.

Scene numbers lock the same way. A scene written between 14 and 15 is 14A, and 15 is never pushed to 16. A cut scene stays in, as its number and the word OMITTED — otherwise the numbers close up behind it and 15 silently becomes 14, which is the exact thing locking exists to prevent.

The asterisks

Every changed line carries an asterisk in the margin, and the marks are what changed from the issue before — so an asterisk on a Blue page tells the crew what is different from the White they are holding. A script supervisor reads down that margin.

The revision slip

The sheet behind the title page listing every color and its date. It is the first thing a script supervisor turns to.

Sending only the changed pages

Nobody reprints 110 pages because one line moved. Each issue has Changed pages beside Whole script — the sheets that are different, which the crew swap into the script they are holding. No title page on a bundle of loose pages.

What a color does to the schedule

The first question asked of a new color is never what changed, it is what it costs. Revisions answers it per shoot day: which days are touched, which scene grew, which one has gone and left a hole, and who is suddenly in or out of a scene — which moves their Day Out of Days. A scene on that list takes you to its strip.

Nothing else can do this. Final Draft does not know your schedule, and the scheduling programs do not know your script.

Who has which color

Off Contacts, crew and cast only — "has the sound department got the pink?" is asked every afternoon of a shoot and the office usually keeps it in a spreadsheet. It records what somebody did and sends nothing.

Exports: every document

One window, every document. Export in the sidebar, from any screen.

Each one is gated on the page it comes off, so you are never offered a door that will not open.

Script

• Screenplay (PDF) — as it is sent: title page, revision slip when issued, locked pages and marks.
• Tagged screenplay (PDF) — the same pages with every breakdown tag highlighted.
• Final Draft (FDX) — for Final Draft and anything that reads it.
• Word (DOCX) — screenplay format, for anybody without Final Draft.

Shoot day

• Call sheet (PDF) — the day, with the crew list on page two.
• Sides (PDF) — the script's own pages for that day, in shooting order, with the other scenes struck out. Half size puts two to a sheet.
• Crew list (PDF) — everybody on Contacts by department, and the cast by the part they play, with a phone and an email beside each.

Breakdown

• Breakdown sheets, Elements report, Locations & cast.

Schedule

• Stripboard, One-liner, Day Out of Days.

Budget

• Budget (PDF) — topsheet and every account behind it.
• Topsheet only — the one page financiers read.
• Budget spreadsheet (CSV) — opens in Excel and Sheets.

Storyboard, Delivery, Data

• Storyboard (PDF), Delivery schedule (PDF), and Spreadsheet (CSV).

The title page

Every export leads with it: the title in capitals centered on the page, written by, the author, and at the bottom left how to reach them. The email and phone are per screenplay, in Project settings, both optional — a script written with somebody else carries their agent's number, not yours. A blank field prints nothing at all rather than a blank line.

The title page is unnumbered and is not counted. Your page 1 is still page 1.

More than one writer

The word between two names is a credit, not punctuation. & is a team who wrote together; and is one after the other. So "A & B and C" is a real credit a reader takes straight off the page. Writers are a list in Project settings, with the joining word in front of each name after the first.

A title logo

The film's own title as artwork, where the words would be. Upload it in Project settings. Whatever you upload is kept at full resolution and the drawn size is capped — fitted inside a 4 × 1.4 inch box, centered — so a wide logo and a tall one take the same room and nobody's can come out bigger than anybody else's. Final Draft keeps the typed title, because an .fdx title page is paragraphs of text and cannot hold artwork.

Deliverables

What has to be handed over at the end, and whether it has been. The least glamorous stage and the one that holds up the money.

Where: Production → Deliverables.

It is nearly the same list on every film, so nobody types it. Start the schedule lays out the standard one under the five headings a distributor's own list arrives in — Picture, Sound, Text, Legal, Publicity — each line with the spec beside it, because "Feature master" on its own has started more arguments than it has settled.

Rename anything, give it a date and somebody to own it, throw away what this film does not owe.

Three states and no more

Not started · In hand · Delivered, on one control that cycles. That is the whole life of a deliverable. "90% done" on a delivery schedule is not a state, it is a hope. A date that has gone by reads in red.

The PDF

Grouped, with a box to tick — because it gets printed, marked up in pen and emailed back.

Novels

The other half of the switch at the top of the sidebar. Smaller than the screenplay side and deliberately so — but a whole manuscript goes from first line to paperback-ready PDF here.

Writing

Chapters down the side, the manuscript in the middle, set in Source Serif at a real reading measure. The bottom bar says ✓ Saved and counts words — 62 in this chapter · 139 words, the chapter first, because that is the one being written.

Three honest states: Unsaved while an edit is waiting, Saving… only once a save has actually started, ✓ Saved when it is up.

Importing

Plain text works, and a Markdown heading is a chapter — # One, ## Part Two. Scriptnib's own scene divider is hashes and nothing else, so both work and neither gets confused with the other.

Notes

Manuscript on the left, notes on the right. The same shape the screenplay editor borrowed.

Book details

Title, author, the cover, the dedication, the epigraph — everything the front matter needs.

Preview

The book, typeset, as it will actually print. With Listen, which reads it aloud, and a bookmark that keeps your place. This is the one to send somebody.

Exports

• PDF (the book) — paperback-ready, properly typeset.
• Word (the manuscript) — standard submission format, for agents and editors.

Versions

The newest ten explicit saves, restorable, in the ⋯ menu — the same as a screenplay. A manuscript is worked on for a year, so this matters more here, not less.

Fix quotes

Prose wants curly quotes; a screenplay does not, because Courier is a typewriter face. So novels get Fix quotes and screenplays get Clean up, and neither borrows the other's.

Connect an AI app

Use Claude or ChatGPT on your own screenplays, in their app, with your work in front of them. It takes about two minutes to set up and you never paste a key.

Where: MCP in the sidebar. The window has a Claude / ChatGPT switch and the steps for each, with your address to copy.

What MCP is

MCP is a standard way for an AI app to reach a service on your behalf. Scriptnib runs one at https://scriptnib.com/mcp. You sign in to Scriptnib once, in your own browser, and press Allow — the AI app never sees your password and there is no key to keep anywhere.

The config block

Some apps ask for the address in a form; others take a file. For ChatGPT and Codex the MCP window carries both, and the block is just the address written the way those apps expect:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "scriptnib": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://scriptnib.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

There is no token in it and that is not an omission. Scriptnib signs you in with OAuth, so there is no key to put there and none to lose.

Claude

Scriptnib is in Claude's connector directory, so there is nothing to paste.

1. Open Scriptnib in Claude — the same link is the Add Scriptnib to Claude button in the MCP window. On a Team or Enterprise plan, an Owner adds it for the organization first.
2. Press Connect, sign in to Scriptnib and press Allow.
3. In a chat, open + → Connectors and turn Scriptnib on.

If the directory is switched off for your organization, add it by hand: Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector, paste https://scriptnib.com/mcp, then Add and Connect.

ChatGPT

Scriptnib is in ChatGPT's app directory, so there is nothing to paste.

1. Open Scriptnib in ChatGPT — the same link is the Add Scriptnib to ChatGPT button in the MCP window.
2. Press Connect, sign in to Scriptnib and press Allow.
3. In any chat, type @ScriptNib and ask: "Show me my screenplays."

If the directory is switched off for your workspace, ChatGPT can still add it by hand: Plugins → + → Add custom MCP server, name it ScriptNib, paste https://scriptnib.com/mcp, sign in when asked, then Create as a plugin.

Disconnecting

The same window lists what is connected and when. Disconnect all revokes access immediately; an app would need your approval again to come back.

What AI can do with your film

Seventy-two abilities, which is close to everything a person can do on the screen. Here they are by job, in plain words, with the tool name beside each so a developer can match them up.

Read the script

• List your screenplays and open one — list_projects, get_project
• Read a scene, or any range of lines — read_scene, read_range
• Search the script — search_script
• Read the notes left on it, with who wrote them and the lines they sit on — read_script_notes

Write and edit

• Make an edit — apply_edit
• Start a new screenplay — create_project
• Leave a note, reply to one, delete one — write_script_note
• Rename a character or a location everywhere — rename_character_or_location
• Title, credit, contact details, scene numbering, dual dialogue — edit_project_settings
• The title logo — set_title_logo

Development

• Read and fill the story, beats, characters and outline — get_development, update_development
• Draft a scene onto its outline card — insert_scene_draft

Breakdown

• Read it — list_breakdown, get_locations
• Tag scenes — add_breakdown_tags
• Fix a batch: rename, re-note, re-categorize, or delete — update_breakdown_tags, remove_breakdown_tags

Schedule

• Read the board — get_schedule
• Put scenes on a shoot day, or take them off — schedule_scenes
• Add or remove days and breaks — add_shoot_day, add_shoot_break, remove_shoot_day, relabel_shoot_break
• Banners inside a day — a company move, a meal, your own words — add_schedule_banner, update_schedule_banner, remove_schedule_banner
• Rebuild the board, keeping every wrapped day — auto_schedule_board
• A rain day: split a scene over days, wrap a day, lose one to the weather — split_scene, join_scene, wrap_shoot_day, unwrap_shoot_day, lose_shoot_day_to_weather
• First day of photography, pages per day, skip weekends — set_schedule_settings

Production

• The Timeline: read it, add and move work, milestones — get_plan, add_work, update_work, remove_work, add_milestones…
• Contacts — add_contacts, update_contact, remove_contacts
• Call sheets — get_call_sheet, set_call_sheet
• Email a day's call sheet and sides to the people on it — send_call_sheet. Only to addresses on Contacts, and it asks you first.
• The delivery schedule — edit_deliverables
• Which color the script is on and what has changed since — get_revisions read-only

Money

• Start the budget — the chart of accounts with this film's own figures in it — start_budget
• The topsheet, or one account's lines — get_budget
• Add, change and remove lines; set the globals you own; set a fringe; set the contingency and the bond; bring the shoot days, cast days, locations and page count up to date off the board — edit_budget

Only somebody separately ticked on the budget can do either. See The Budget.

The look

• Storyboard shots: list, add, change, remove, reorder — list_shots, add_shots, update_shot, remove_shots
• Put a picture on a shot — set_shot_image, set_shot_images
• Moodboards: read, make, rename, delete, and add notes, colors and sections — get_moodboard, edit_moodboard

Get a document out

• Any of the documents — script PDF, Final Draft, Word, tagged PDF, sides, call sheet, Stripboard, One-liner, Day Out of Days, breakdown, budget, storyboard, delivery schedule, crew list — export_document

An AI app cannot carry a PDF, so it hands you a link that works for one hour and opens without signing in. It can also email it to you as an attachment — to the address on your own account and nowhere else. CSVs can come back as text, which is the one to ask for when you want the AI to actually read your numbers.

Novels

• Chapters: read, edit, insert, rename, renumber, delete, move, split, merge
• Search, replace, smart quotes, notes, and a snapshot to restore from

What it deliberately cannot do

• Issue a revision color. It cannot be taken back, the pages are out, and the app asks for your password. No tool does it.
• Clean up. No tool runs it. The rules are rules, and SI Clean up — the one part of that screen that does use a model — is started from the screen so you see the list and tick it.
• Overwrite a budget that already exists. It can make the first one, never replace one.
• Add a picture to a moodboard. A picture is a file, shrunk in your browser.
• Reach a page you do not hold, or anybody else's film.

Things worth asking for

Copy these. They are written the way they actually work — ask for the thinking before the doing, and read before you write.

Development

• "Read my screenplay and fill in the Develop tab — story, beat sheet, characters, outline. Show me each one before you save it."
• "Give me five loglines for this script, and tell me which one you'd lead with and why."
• "Where does the second act sag? Point at specific scenes."
• "MAEVE disappears for thirty pages. List every scene she could plausibly be in."

The script

• "Read scenes 12 to 18 and tell me what's not working. Don't rewrite anything yet."
• "This dialogue is on the nose. Rewrite scene 14 so they're both avoiding the subject."
• "Rename MAEVE to ORLA everywhere."
• "Read the notes on this script and group them into themes."

Breakdown

• "Break down scenes 1 to 20. Show me the tags in chat first and wait for my go-ahead."
• "Any props that only appear once? I want to cut some."
• "Which scenes have stunts, vehicles or animals? Those are my expensive days."

Schedule

• "Build me a 20-day schedule. Group by location, keep night exteriors together, and tell me your reasoning before you move anything."
• "Read the Day Out of Days. Who is strung across the most days for the least work?"
• "Move scenes 31 and 44 so MAEVE's days are in one week, and tell me what that breaks."
• "It rained on day 10. We got 1 1/8 of scene 23 and none of scene 24. Split 23, move the rest and 24 to day 12, wrap day 10, and tell me what moved."

Money

• "Give me the budget as a CSV and tell me where the money actually is."
• "We've lost two shoot days. What does that save, and what does it cost me elsewhere?"
• "Check account 3300 — is anything marked as labor that's actually equipment?"

Documents

• "Email me the sides and the call sheet for day 4."
• "Send tomorrow's call sheet and sides to everyone on it, with a note to bring rain gear. Tell me who is getting it first."
• "Give me a link to the current script PDF."
• "Export the stripboard and tell me how many night exteriors we have."

What AI can and cannot reach

Worth reading once, so you know exactly what you have switched on.

It is you, with your permissions

A connected app acts as your account. It can reach what you can reach and nothing else:

• Only your screenplays, and ones shared with you.
• Only the pages you hold on each of them. Not on the budget? Neither is it.
• A locked screenplay refuses writes, for it as for you.

Nothing changes silently

Writing tools announce what they did, and Claude or ChatGPT shows you the call before it runs it.

Download links

A link from export_document opens without signing in and works for an hour. Treat it like the document itself — do not paste it anywhere public. It is re-checked each time it is opened, so if you lose access to that screenplay the old link stops working immediately.

Email goes to you, or to the people on a call sheet

A document from export_document is emailed to the address on your own account and nowhere else. That is what stops text hidden in a script, a note or an imported PDF from talking an AI into mailing your screenplay out.

The one exception is send_call_sheet, and it is narrow on purpose: one day's call sheet and sides, never the whole script, and only to people on that day's call sheet who have an address in Contacts. An address typed into the chat is refused. It is told to say who it is sending to and wait for your yes, because an email cannot be called back.

Your work is not training data

Scriptnib does not sell, rent or share your work, and nothing is sent to any AI app unless you connect one. Disconnecting stops it at once. What the AI company itself does with a conversation is governed by their terms — read them, especially on a free plan.

Good practice

• Save a version before a big AI edit. It is one press and it is the whole safety net.
• Read a breakdown batch before you accept it — tag names are the thing AI most often gets slightly wrong. See Tagging well.
• Never let an AI set a tax incentive rate. Get it from the authority.
• Check the name on the Allow screen is you. Two accounts is the most common cause of "it says it's connected but finds no screenplays".

Glossary

Every word this manual uses that a set uses. If you only half know one of these, look it up here rather than nodding.

Above the line

The people whose deals are negotiated individually — writer, director, producers, lead cast. Everything else is below the line.

Beat

A turn in the story: the moment it stops going one way and starts going another.

Breakdown

The list of everything the script needs, scene by scene.

Call sheet

The page telling the whole crew where to be tomorrow, when, and what is being shot.

Call time

When you have to be there. Crew call is when the crew arrives; shooting call is when the camera is expected to roll.

Completion bond

Insurance guaranteeing the film gets finished. The bond company reads your budget line by line.

Contingency

Money set aside for things going wrong. Usually 10%.

Continuity

Keeping details consistent between shots filmed days apart. The script supervisor's job.

Day Out of Days

The chart of which actor works, holds, starts and finishes on which day. Drives their contracts and a large share of the budget.

Dual dialogue

Two people talking at once, printed in two columns side by side.

Eighths

Scenes are measured in eighths of a page. "2 and 3/8" is two and a bit pages.

Element

One thing the breakdown found: a prop, a costume, a car, a stunt.

Fringe

What is paid on top of a wage — pension, health, payroll taxes, union contributions. A percentage of labor, never of equipment.

Golden hour

The hour after sunrise and before sunset, when the light is low and warm. Everybody wants to shoot in it; it is an hour long.

Hold

An actor not shooting that day but not released either — so still being paid.

Logline

One sentence: the character, what they want, what is in the way.

Martini shot

The last shot of the day.

MCP

The standard way an AI app connects to a service on your behalf. How Claude or ChatGPT reaches your screenplays.

OMITTED

What a cut scene becomes once the script is locked — its number stays, with the word, so the numbers after it do not close up.

One-liner

The schedule in short form: one line per scene, grouped by shoot day.

Page lock

Once a script is issued, page 42 must keep meaning page 42. New material becomes 42A rather than pushing everything down.

Parenthetical

A short direction inside a speech, in brackets. Use sparingly.

Prep

Pre-production. Everything between "we are making this" and day one.

Revision color

White, Blue, Pink, Yellow, Green, Goldenrod, Buff, Salmon, Cherry, Second White. Each issue of a locked script goes out on the next one.

Scene heading / slugline

INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT. Inside or out, where, when.

Sides

The script's pages being shot today, in shooting order, with the scenes not shot struck through.

Slate

The clapperboard. Also a verb.

Strip

One scene on the schedule board. Its color is day/night and interior/exterior.

Stripboard

The whole schedule as strips, grouped into shoot days.

Topsheet

The one page of the budget everybody reads: each account, the two big subtotals, contingency, bond, grand total.

Turnaround

The rest period between wrap and the next call. Breaking it costs money.

Unit base

Where the trucks, trailers and catering are parked.

Weather day

A shoot day lost to the weather. Everything after it moves on one date.

Wrap

The end of the day, or the end of the shoot. On the Stripboard, a wrapped day is one that has been shot.

1st AD

First assistant director. Runs the schedule and runs the set. Not an assistant.

Keyboard

Everything focusable can be reached with Tab and takes a gold ring when you get there with the keyboard — never when you click.

When something is wrong

"It looks broken since the update"

Reload the page. A tab left open keeps running the version it loaded, and an app added to an iPhone home screen is worse — iOS suspends it rather than reloading, so a fix can go unseen for days. Scriptnib shows a bar at the top when it has updated.

"My AI app says it's connected but finds no screenplays"

It is signed in to a different account. Remove the connection and add it again, and check the name on the Allow screen is you.

"The AI doesn't know about a feature that exists"

Reconnect. The app keeps offering the tool list it was given when it connected, so anything added since simply will not appear.

"My connector says it needs auth"

Re-authorize it in the AI app's own settings.

"A scene has no number on the stripboard"

Scene numbering is off. The ⋯ menu on the screenplay → Number scenes. It is off by default because a script in development does not want numbers.

"Night scenes are scheduled as day"

A heading with no time of day falls through to DAY. Run Clean up → Analyze for errors; it looks for exactly this.

"A tag highlighted the wrong word"

The tag is named as a description rather than as the thing. See Tagging well.

"An actor isn't on the call sheet for a scene they're in"

They have no line in it, so they were never tagged. Tag them as Cast on that scene in the Breakdown and they will appear on the strips, the Day Out of Days and the call sheet.

"The call sheet has no weather"

The location has not been placed. Contacts → the location → Find this place. A forecast only runs about nine days out; beyond that the sheet says so rather than inventing something.

"I can't see the Budget tab"

It is ticked per person and is not part of any job. The owner has to switch it on for you in Roles.

"It stopped and said it was too big"

It ran out of room. A model thinks before it answers and the thinking uses the same allowance as the words, so a job the size of a whole screenplay can use it all before anything is written. Ask for a stretch — "break down scenes 1 to 15" — and it will work through the film with you.

"A suggested tag was refused"

The Breakdown checks that the last word of a tag's name actually appears in that scene, so a description gets sent back rather than a thing. Rename it to the thing itself in four words or fewer and put the detail in the note — see Tagging well. Accented words used to be refused wrongly and no longer are.

"I deleted something"

Trash, for a whole screenplay. Versions, for anything inside one.

"A download link stopped working"

They last an hour, and they are re-checked each time — so one also stops if you have since lost access to that screenplay. Ask again and you get a fresh one.

Still stuck

Contact in the account menu, or the support page. Say what screen you were on and what you expected to happen; a screenshot answers most questions on its own.