The Twyl Manifesto

Authors should keep the helm.

We believe authors should remain in command of their work: its choices, detours, and destination are theirs to make. New technologies, generative Artificial Intelligence among them, should lend a hand and never seize the wheel. Think of Twyl as a first mate: quick to spot a missed turn, handy with a map, and never the captain of the course.

Their work remains theirs.

Artificial Intelligence can be an attentive reader and sounding board: it can review drafts, spot contradictions, suggest edits, and support research. Writers have always sought such company in friends, writing groups, and editors. AI is one more reader at the table, and never the one who decides.

With new technologies, we can shorten the road between first draft and final revision: write faster, edit with sharper focus, test an idea’s depth and soundness, catch contradictions sooner, and read a manuscript for its style, tension, pace, and mood.

But speed is no use if the writer loses the thread. Twyl keeps the project’s context close and builds verification into the process, so writers can weigh each suggestion against what they have written and decide what belongs. We want thoughtful editing to cost less—not authorship, control, or care—and aim to make it ten times more affordable.

Authorship stays where it began: with the writers.

Authors should be empowered to choose what reads their work.

Authors deserve a clear account of how their information is handled and where it goes. We recognize how quickly Artificial Intelligence is advancing, and that providers cannot always meet our highest expectations. Today, major suppliers may collect what authors submit, even when the stated purpose is only fraud and abuse monitoring and may be unable to guarantee where it is processed.

We want to offer authors an alternative: a world in which their data is never stored and never sent to distant AI data centers for processing. We have chosen to host Twyl in Switzerland, near an AI provider whose ethical cloud runs open-weight models on renewable energy, with a low carbon footprint. Authors who choose that provider have their AI powered by water from the dams of the Alps.

Authors deserve models that earn their place.

We do not choose models by reputation. We test them on the work Twyl actually does: finding contradictions in real novels, cataloguing characters and places, reading a writer's style, editing without losing what matters. Each model is scored on what it finds, what it misses, how long it takes, and what it costs.

The most expensive model we tried was the strongest, but only by a few points over models that cost a fraction as much. We do not charge every writer for a difference most would never notice. Among the open-weight models we can run in Switzerland, one leads the others.

As models change, we test again and change our choice when the results say so. Ink is priced from what each model costs to run, so a better or cheaper model reaches you as a better or cheaper Twyl.

Authors should be free to take their work with them.

Authors’ manuscripts and supporting materials are theirs. Twyl lets authors download their entire book workspace, the manuscript, notes, discussions, and history, so they can keep a complete copy, continue working outside Twyl, or return to it later. They can edit the downloaded files and re-upload them whenever they like.

Our pledge.

We will keep building Twyl around one simple principle: technology should serve the writer’s work and never take it over. The choices, the voice, and the final word belong to the author.