The questions you might have.

No. Boards are open to anyone with an account, and plenty of the best drafts come from readers rather than working writers. If you have written professionally that will show in your drafts — but nothing here asks for a résumé, and no one is screened before they can contribute.

No. Joining a Board, reading the canon, drafting ideas, voting and commenting are all free, on every plan including the free one. There is nothing to buy to take part.

The creator whose world it is, always. Votes and comments tell them what the group responds to, and strong drafts genuinely do rise — but the final call belongs to one person, on purpose. That is what stops a shared world turning into a committee, and it is why the worlds here stay coherent.

Read the Board Participation Terms before you draft — they set out exactly what happens to an idea you submit and what rights the creator gets if it becomes canon. Short version: canonized ideas become part of the creator's world, and you keep your credit permanently. Do not draft anything you are not willing to see used on those terms.

Three things. A permanent credit on anything of yours that becomes canon. Whatever perks the creator has offered their Board — some offer a credit mention, early pages, or a character named after a contributor. And the part most people come for: writing inside a real world with other people, and having the person building it read what you wrote.

Yes, and it is free. The same account works both ways — you can be a contributor in five groups and run your own alongside it. The workspace those rooms are built on is the other half of CanonBoard, and it is what stops a world falling apart once other people start adding to it.

Two things in one. A workspace for building, organizing, and stress-testing the logic of a fictional world — and a public script where, if you choose, the Board can write, rank and decide what becomes canon. You build the world here and decide what's real; you write it wherever you write.

Yes. Conflict Detection reads your full world on demand and surfaces direct contradictions — dead-then-alive characters, broken rules, two characters in the same place at the same time — with an explanation per conflict. Available on Core and above; each scan costs 1 Canon Credit.

Your entry for the beat a script needs next. Read the script as it stands on its Board, read the drafts already submitted for the open slot, and write yours in script format. Drafts are ranked against each other by everyone reading the round, and the highest-ranked beat joins the script. Free to enter on every plan; ranking five drafts is how a free writer earns a submission, and Core and above skip that step.

Never. Refine interviews you — one question at a time, about ten per session — and parses your answers into structured cards on the board. It never generates story content and never suggests plot decisions. If you want a tool that writes for you, we are cheerfully the wrong product.

A sealed section for intentional mysteries — the season-two reveal, the hidden motivation, the twist. The conflict engine never flags what's in the Vault, because a deliberate gap isn't a mistake. It's kept completely separate from active canon.

The layer before the script: who your characters are, what your world's rules permit, how every thread connects, what happens when. Most tools start checking your world after you've written it. CanonBoard works before — when contradictions are cheap to fix.

Yes. Geography lets you pin locations to a real-world map or build a fictional one, connected to your locations and timeline. It is part of Canon Canvas, which starts at Core.

These are the power tools, available on Core and above. Smart Import turns a script or treatment into a built-out board; Refine interviews you to draw canon out of what you already know; Conflict Detection reads your whole world and flags contradictions with an explanation. They organize and pressure-test your world — they never write your story.

Yes. Smart Import reads a script, treatment, PDF, or doc and builds your board automatically. Available on Core and above.

Every card, image, note, and frame can be moved, resized, and locked in place; connected to other cards with labeled relationship lines; grouped and multi-selected to move or delete together; and copied and pasted between different projects' canvases. You can also pin reference images, sticky notes, free text, and labeled frames anywhere on the infinite canvas.

CanonBoard's world elements are typed cards: characters, locations, lore, world rules, objects, plot points, timeline events, and relationships. Because cards know what they are, the engine can stress-test the whole world for contradictions and draw the relationships between everything.

The Board is the group of writers and readers who decide what happens next in a script. It is also the page where that happens: the script as it stands, the round currently open, and the drafts competing for the next beat. Everyone on the Board reads the same pages, votes on the drafts other people wrote, and can submit one of their own. What the Board votes for becomes canon.

No. The Board is a ranked queue of suggestions, never a binding vote. The Board's votes are signal about what resonates; nothing enters your world's canon unless you canonize it. You can decline any draft, and make a project private again at any time.

The Board's upvotes, and nothing else. Every reader upvotes the drafts they would make canon; those upvotes add up to a ranking, and the most-upvoted beat joins the script. The scoring never sees who wrote a draft, what plan they are on, or whether they have paid CanonBoard anything — there is no way to buy position in a round, and that is enforced in the code rather than promised in copy: the module that scores a round takes no account, tier or payment input at all.

Yes. When you canonize a draft, the contributor's name stays attached to it as permanent credit, and the platform-wide leaderboard ranks top contributors by drafts made canon across every public project. Credit is what a canonized draft earns — canonizing creates no payment obligation and no ownership claim, as set out in the Board Participation Terms.

By winning a round. The writer whose beat is ranked highest is credited on the script permanently, and where the round carries a cash prize, paid it. The amount is announced with the round, CanonBoard funds it, and CanonBoard takes no cut. Most rounds are free to enter; some charge an entry fee in Canon Credits, always shown before you submit — and since voting earns credits, taking part in other rounds is one way to pay for those. Add a PayPal address and request a payout whenever you have a balance. There is no minimum.

No. Funding is available on every plan including Free, and the fee is identical on all of them. Paid plans add unlimited projects, extra seats, version history, and the power tools — they don't change the split or unlock the ability to earn.

No. Reading the script, upvoting drafts and writing into a round cost nothing on any plan, including the free one. There is no application, no interview and no waiting list — make an account and you can read the current script straight away. Some rounds charge an entry fee, paid in Canon Credits and named before you write; a Canon Credit can also skip the upvote requirement, on any plan that has credits.

Everything a round involves: reading the script, upvoting drafts, and writing the next beat. That is the whole product and none of it is behind the paywall. Canon Canvas and the tools that live in it — the card types, relationship mapping, geography, timeline, Smart Import, Refine and Conflict Detection — start at Core, along with the Locked Vault and Version History. The Media Library, Documents and full export are free on every plan.

CanonBoard's one currency, worth a dollar of a round's entry fee. A credit also buys a Conflict Detection scan, a Refine session, or a Smart Import of a small document — or skips a round's voting requirement so you can submit straight away. Core includes 10 a month and Pro 50, shared across your whole account rather than per seat. Voting earns them back slowly. Packs never expire: Starter ($2.50 / 10), Standard ($5.00 / 25), Pro Pack ($10.00 / 60).

Credit packs: Starter ($2.50 / 10), Standard ($5.00 / 25), Pro Pack ($10.00 / 60). Packs never expire and are available on every paid tier.

Core is $7/mo with 3 seats and Pro is $19/mo with 8 — and either tier can add seats at $5/seat/month. Both have unlimited projects.

Yes. Subscriptions are monthly, cancellation is self-serve, and your boards stay readable and exportable. No retention maze, no chat with a 'specialist.'

You do. Entirely, unambiguously, forever. CanonBoard claims no rights over the worlds, characters or stories you build here. You open rounds on your own project and the Board writes into it; the one thing that ever gets signed is a short agreement from the writer whose beat wins, covering the use of that beat in the script, before their prize is paid.

No. Your story content is never used to train AI models — not ours, not our AI provider's, not anyone's. It only leaves CanonBoard when you trigger one of the three tools that need it: Smart Import, Refine, or Conflict Detection. Everything else — the canvas, relationship mapping, the timeline, the Vault, version history — runs on our own infrastructure and never goes anywhere. When those three do send content out, it goes under commercial API terms that forbid training on it and cap how long it can be kept. That is a contractual commitment from the provider, not a promise we are making on their behalf, and changing any of it would take your explicit opt-in rather than a quiet update to our terms.

Only when you trigger an AI feature — Conflict Detection, Refine, or Smart Import. Those send the relevant content to our AI provider per-request to do the job you asked for.

Always. Full Export produces a formatted PDF of your entire world on every plan, including Free. Your world is portable by design.

Projects are private by default — only the people you invite, with the role you give them (view, comment, or edit). If you publish a project, its Board and canon become public to anyone, but the Locked Vault stays private and is never exposed. You can unpublish at any time.

One project, one board, every writer on it — live presence, real-time cursors, role permissions. Pro adds comment threads on cards and a change history showing exactly who changed what, when. The episode-seven problem stops existing.

Yes — view and comment roles exist exactly for producers, executives, and directors who need the world without the keys to it.