Tracking

This page is about knowing where each piece of writing stands, and getting back to it. It covers the stages a work moves through, the snapshot Escrita takes when a work changes stage, the home note with its works block, how Escrita remembers where you left off, and writing mode, which hides everything but the note.

Other pages: Getting started, Writing, Revision, Publishing, Screenplays, The world and Features and settings.

Say where a work stands: stages and status words

A work moves through five stages: idea, draft, revision, ready and published. You don’t learn new words for them. You map each stage to the words you already put in the status property, and Escrita reads the stage from the word.

A work is a book, or a tracked note, whose status is one of your stage words. Chapters are not works. A note with no status is not a work. A note whose status isn’t one of your stage words (such as paused) is not a work either; the home block only counts it as “without a stage”.

In Settings › Escrita, Stages has one row per stage, Words for Idea, Words for Draft and so on. Type your words separated by commas. The first word is the one Escrita writes (when you publish, or when a new note starts as a draft); the others count too. Words match ignoring capitals. The defaults are idea, draft, revision, ready and published. A short story written in Portuguese might use ideia, rascunho, revisão, pronto and publicado.

A word in two stages. If you type the same word under two stages, the first stage wins, and the settings tell you so.
A color for each stage. Each row has Color for Draft and so on, and Remove the color clears it. The colors show on the chapter dots and the stage chips in the outline, and as the key on the counts line of the home block.
Other status colors. Statuses that aren’t a stage, such as paused on a chapter, can have a color too. In Other status colors, write one per line as word: color, for example paused: #6e6b66.
The property. The name of the status property (default status) is a setting in Properties and folders, Status and summary properties.

New notes start as draft

With New notes start as draft on (it is on by default), a new book or chapter, and a note you create in a tracked folder (from Obsidian’s New note or from a template), gets your first draft word as its status, unless it already has one. Escrita waits a moment after the note is created, so a template’s own status wins. Templates, universe entries and Escrita’s own notes (home, word lists, universe note) are left alone. Only the properties change.

Keep a version at each stage: the stage snapshot

When you change a work’s status to another stage, Escrita takes a snapshot named for the change, in your own words, for example “draft → revision”. It waits until the status has stopped changing for a few seconds, so a quick fix of a typo in the word doesn’t take two. For a book, it saves the book’s note and each chapter.

Stage snapshots are never trimmed. They are your record of what the work looked like at each turn. They show as Stage change in the snapshots list (Open snapshots).
Only while Obsidian is open. A status you change while Obsidian is closed isn’t snapshotted.
It needs Snapshots. The switch is Snapshot at each stage, in Features, group The desk. While Snapshots is off, it is grey and does nothing; it works again when you turn Snapshots on. See Features and settings.

Start from one note: the home note

The home note is a note you own, with a block that Escrita draws. It answers “what do I write today?”. Add this to any note:

```escrita-works
```

Then set that note as the Home note in Settings › Escrita (the Home note section), or run Open the home note, which offers to create it for you.

Escrita draws the block and never writes into it. It shows:

Writing: your works in the draft stage.
Revising: your works in the revision stage.
One line of counts for the rest, with a colored dot per stage: ideas, ready, pending (when Submissions is on) and published, and works with no stage. Click a count to unfold the works under it; click again to fold it.

Each work is a line with its title and one fact: its length against its target or limit, its deadline, or, for a book, how many chapters are ready. The works you edited last come first.

To see only some of your works, add folder: lines inside the block:

```escrita-works
folder: Contos
folder: Textos
```

Any other line is ignored. A folder that doesn’t exist says so in the block.

Open the home note

Open the home note opens the note. If you haven’t set one, Escrita adopts an existing Home.md, Início.md or Inicio.md, and never overwrites it. If there is none, it asks first, then creates the note with an empty works block (Home.md in English, Início.md in Portuguese). The setup finds the same note. If the note you set doesn’t exist, it asks before creating it. Renaming or moving the home note updates the setting.

The command has no default hotkey. You can give it one in Settings › Hotkeys.

Open on startup

Open on startup, next to the home note setting, opens the home note in the active tab when Obsidian starts, in place of the tab Obsidian restored. It is off by default. It only acts when Obsidian starts: turning Escrita on in the middle of a session never swaps the tab you are in.

Come back where you stopped: where you left off

Click a work in the home block and it opens where you left off:

A note opens at the spot you last edited. With no such spot, it opens at its first unwritten beat, and with no beat, at its end.
A book opens the chapter you last edited, at the spot you last edited. With no such chapter, it opens the first chapter with an unwritten beat, else the last chapter at its end.

Escrita remembers the spot only for works and for the chapters of a book that is a work. It keeps the text around your cursor along with the position, so if you changed the note from another device or editor, it finds the place again by the words. It follows a note if you rename or move it. There is nothing to set up and nothing to clean: the record is saved in the plugin’s data, never in your notes.

Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on a Mac) or middle-click a work to open it in a new tab. In writing mode a click opens the work in the same tab.

If you turn the home block off in Features (Works block and where you left off), Escrita stops recording where you left off and the block shows as plain code. The records stay and come back when you turn it on.

Write with only the note: writing mode

Writing mode hides everything around the note, so what is left is the page.

What it hides. The left and right sidebars, the tab bar, the ribbon and the status bar. On a phone it also hides the note’s title bar and the bottom bar. Nothing is written to your vault, and nothing in your files changes.

What stays.

The note. The reading column is your theme’s.
A quiet “Exit writing mode” button in the top right corner. It is always visible, because there is no hover on a phone.
A small goal counter, such as “today 312 / 500”, at the bottom of the screen, when Goals is on and you have a daily goal. It is the only thing Escrita adds. It follows Goals being turned on or off, and goes away with it.

The commands. Two commands, and the palette offers the one that fits the moment: Enter writing mode when it is off, Exit writing mode when it is on. The first time in a session you enter, a notice tells you how to leave. They have no default hotkey. Set your own in Settings › Hotkeys.

Leaving. The button or the command. Escrita reopens only the sidebars it closed, so a sidebar you had already closed stays closed.

Open in writing mode. The setting Open in writing mode, next to Open on startup, starts Obsidian in writing mode. If Open on startup is on too, the home note opens first and then the mode starts. The setup’s “Writing mode” layout turns it on for you (see Getting started).

Open a work from the home note. Click a work: it opens in the same tab, where you left off, and you stay in writing mode.

Writing mode is part of the home block feature and has no switch of its own. Turning that feature off while the mode is on leaves the mode first, so nothing stays hidden.

Next to a zen plugin or a theme

Obsidian has no zen mode of its own, and community plugins do: Zen Mode, Ultra Zen Mode and Easy View are three. If you want more than this (a typewriter scroll, fading the other lines, hiding more of the chrome), try one of them. Escrita’s mode stays small on purpose: it can enter without a second plugin, and only Escrita has the goal counter and “where you left off”.

The two can sit side by side. Escrita reopens only what it hid itself, so a zen plugin’s own hiding is left alone when you leave writing mode. If both of them hid the same sidebar, leaving Escrita’s mode may bring it back; leave the zen plugin’s mode afterwards.

Settings and commands on this page

Where	Name	What it does
Settings › Stages	Words for each stage, Color for each stage, Other status colors, New notes start as draft	Map your status words to stages
Settings › Home note	Home note, Open on startup, Open in writing mode	The note that holds the block, and what happens when Obsidian starts
Features › The desk	Works block and where you left off, Snapshot at each stage	The home block and the stage snapshot
Commands	Open the home note, Enter writing mode, Exit writing mode

When something looks wrong

You see	Why	What to do
The block says “No works yet”	No note or book has a status that is one of your stage words	Set a status, or change the words under Stages
A note is missing from the block	It isn’t tracked, has no status, or a `folder:` line leaves it out	Check the folder, the status and the block
A note is counted “without a stage”	Its status isn’t one of your stage words	Add the word to a stage
No snapshot after a status change	Snapshots is off, or the status changed while Obsidian was closed	Turn on Snapshots
The block shows as code	Works block and where you left off is off	Turn it on in Features
No goal counter in writing mode	Goals is off, or there is no daily goal	Turn on Goals and set a goal