31 COMMENTS

NEO v0.3.0

I’ve made some updates since the last blog post about NEO. You can download the current release here.

Added the ability to drag and drop bookshelves (I’ve got four shelves going right now, so this is a feature I needed). I also made it so you can export an entire shelf into a single file (for the anthology I’m working on). The last little thing was also for me: NEO was defaulting with a Chapter 1, but I’m writing a lot of short stories now that don’t have any chapters. So the way it works now is you have a title page, hit ENTER, and then get a blank writing screen. No chapters. The first time you create a new chapter (ENTER > ENTER > ENTER), you will create a Chapter 2 and a Chapter 1 up above.

It sounds convoluted, but it works like I want it to work for writing novels or short stories.

I also gave the Windows version another try, but I still don’t have a local machine to test it on. But it says it compiled and ran on a remote x86 machine, so fingers crossed for anyone who wants to test it.

Last thing: I’m spending WAY MORE time writing ever since I switched to NEO as my daily driver. It’s just so effective for the drafting process. The coding / updating / uploading is using up very little of my time (mostly time I formerly spent scrolling in socials), so don’t think NEO is taking time away from my writing. The opposite is true!

Favorite thing about this program is that I’m always in several WIPs at once, and NEO remembers where I am so I can just click on a title and resume my flow. No more juggling documents or finding where I left off. And despite the small additions, I’ve been able to keep it clean, clean, clean. If you use it regularly and have any thoughts, suggestions, or find any bugs, comment below!

31 responses to “NEO v0.3.0”

  1. Ethan Freckleton Avatar
    Ethan Freckleton

    Hi Hugh, I’m always a fan of writing tools and processes that trick the brain back into distraction-free flow-mode.

    One bit of early feedback:
    I’m on Mac and typically run in dark mode. Neo (v0.3.0) is too dark and low-contrast between background and the font on the main modal pages (header/footer menus) to be particularly visible to my middle-aged eyes, even when I turn up the display brightness. If I hover over a particular option, it becomes bright enough but I didn’t even notice the elements at first (and still struggle to read them). The font for these elements cannot be resized, which also contributes to the challenge.

    Reply
    1. Hugh Howey Avatar
      Hugh Howey

      Yeah, sorry, but that’s on purpose. I want every bit of UI to disappear except what I’m writing. You hover over things to make them legible.

      This is not a piece of software for people who like software. It’s just for immersing yourself in the book.

      Reply
      1. Ethan Freckleton Avatar
        Ethan Freckleton

        Hugh, I can understand that perspective. Consider a middle ground – I could barely see the rectangle to create a new project.

        Reply
      2. Hector Blanco de Frutos Avatar
        Hector Blanco de Frutos

        A switch on a preferences window like ‘Immersive UI (on/off)’ could suit different users.

        Reply
        1. Hugh Howey Avatar
          Hugh Howey

          I can do that next time I make updates.

          Reply
          1. Hector Blanco de Frutos Avatar
            Hector Blanco de Frutos

            Thanks for the reply.

            The app is very neat and to this moment no crash on sight. Really a good job.

            By the way I found your approach really interesting, as stubborn as mine.
            I couldn’t find a music hosting server that fit all my needs and quirks. So I write my own.
            Maybe someday I’ll find the courage to release it publicly.

  2. Jim Strother Avatar
    Jim Strother

    I was able to get it to install properly on Windows 11 now! Whatever you did fixed the install issue I was having on the 0.2.x releases. I’m excited to give it a go!

    Reply
    1. Hugh Howey Avatar
      Hugh Howey

      Yay! Sorry it took so long. I think compiling it on Apple silicon was an issue. Compiled it remotely this time on an x86 machine.

      Reply
  3. John Boardley Avatar
    John Boardley

    I’m back to writing every day since installing Neo. It’s the only writing app I’d gladly pay for.

    Is there any way to merge chapters? For now I’m able to cut the text, delete the chapter, then paste back, so it’s not really such a big deal.

    Many thanks for NEO.

    Reply
    1. Hugh Howey Avatar
      Hugh Howey

      Yeah, my output has been crazy since I started using NEO exclusively. I think having all my WIPs visually in one place and single-clickable, with my current bookmark appearing immediately did something to my brain. For me, it’s all about removing the friction.

      Glad you’re enjoying it. The only payment I ask is that you finish your WIPs and get them out into the world!

      Reply
  4. Indru Maior Avatar
    Indru Maior

    Hi! Absolutely fantastic piece of software, since it works on Linux and it’s smoother and much better than Scrivener ever was for me. Not to mention it outputs EPUB and PDF, so it’s great!

    Quick question: How do I use shortcuts on Linux?

    E.g. ⌘⇧X Placeholder note — mark it, keep writing.

    I don’t have a ⌘ key, as it’s Mac-only, and there doesn’t seem to be an option to do all these things without using the shortcuts.

    Reply
    1. Indru Maior Avatar
      Indru Maior

      Also, I might have already thought of a few features that would add value to it (hope you don’t mind a few suggestions):

      1. Text justification options are missing. These would be great for the general aspect of the manuscript and the exported look.

      2. The scroll on the right cannot be touched by the mouse to manually go through a longer manuscript because the right tab “Notes and Comments” comes out of hiding when I go there. If I pin that section, it completely covers the scroll, so I virtually can only scroll manually and this becomes a pain for longer manuscripts.

      3. Whenever a new section is added (Enter*2), I need to immediately add another blank line if I want to have an intended paragraph. Otherwise, if I start from right after the break, my paragraph is not intended, and hitting TAB just moves the cursor away from the text instead of intending the paragraph, like I would have expected it to. Not sure if this is a bug or intentional. :)

      4. If I accidentally hit Enter*3 when I try to add a new section, and get a new Chapter instead, Ctrl-Z does not undo the move / delete the chapter. This becomes a pain in novellas with multiple sections, when I don’t actually have chapters.

      Apologies for the extended writing, I just think these would be some great improvements.

      Thank you, nevertheless, for what is probably the most amazing writing tool I ever tried!!

      Reply
      1. Hugh Howey Avatar
        Hugh Howey

        Great notes! I’ll work on these this weekend. The indenting is on purpose. It’s a style I like from publishers, where first paragraphs are treated differently from subsequent ones. I’m going to leave that but I like these others.

        Like I’ve said elsewhere, I’m so addicted to writing in NEO that I’m writing like never before. Wait until you put cover art on your WIPs. It changes everything.

        Reply
    2. Jim Avatar
      Jim

      The ctrl button works for those. :)

      Reply
      1. Hugh Howey Avatar
        Hugh Howey

        Yeah, the shortcuts work the descriptions are wrong. Fixed that for current version, which is up now. Also got the scroll wheel sorted and the chapter-delete working now. Added tab for people who want that and justification in the FORMAT menu. Fixed a couple of bugs as well.

        Reply
        1. Indru Maior Avatar
          Indru Maior

          Yes, just noticed. My mistake: I didn’t understand that the arrow upwards means Shift. I just thought ⌘⇧X meant Ctrl+X, which made no sense because that is Cut. :))

          But now it says “Ctrl+Shift+X” in the updated version, so it makes sense for people like me who don’t speak Macintosh. :)

          Thank you, Mr. Howey!! Much appreciated!!

          Reply
        2. Indru Maior Avatar
          Indru Maior

          Hi again! I’m on 0.3.7 and I just noticed the Notes tab has dark fonts in Night/dark mode. Am I doing something wrong? The Outline and Manuscript tabs have white fonts, they look normal.

          Paper mode looks normal, it’s just the Night Mode that has issues.

          Also I see the Align Paragraph options are left, center and right, but there is no option for Justified text yet. :)

          And there’s no way to delete a Shelf if I accidentally create one? I have like three shelves and no clue how to remove them other than going to the JSON file and cleaning that. :))

          One last thing: Deleting a book references “Mac Trash”, even on Linux.

          Thank youuu!!! And thousands of apologies for pointing out so many. :)

          Reply
          1. Hugh Howey Avatar
            Hugh Howey

            Don’t apologize! These are very helpful. Version 0.4.0 is uploading now. Tweaked these things and a few others. Deleting a shelf has always been done by right-clicking, but now there’s a tool-tip as a reminder. Renamed “Mac Trash” on Linux for you. Made a justified option. And I suspect the night mode you may have been pasting in black text from elsewhere? NEO now forces text in night mode to paste as white. Let me know if that’s sorted.

            Other things I tweaked: Paper / Night mode is now in the VIEW menu, which makes more sense. And the default for new installs is Night mode, because I love it so much. But it’ll stay however you have it if you’ve already installed it. I also fixed a character dupe problem in the first paragraph of each WIP that kept popping up. And I added a secret shortcut for full-screen mode because I use it religiously: you can COMMAND + ENTER (CONTROL + ENTER on PC and Linux) to go in and out of fullscreen. It’s not documented anywhere yet and may never be. Just for those in the know!

          2. Indru Maior Avatar
            Indru Maior

            @Hugh Howey

            Thank you, sir!!! It just goes to show we needed an actual writer to create a proper writing program, as a ton of software engineers couldn’t make something as practical as this! I’ve used Scrivener in the past, and while it has its functionalities, it’s problematic on Linux and it’s too convoluted for drafting. It’s better for post-processing, I admit.

            I can confirm the notes look good now. I don’t know if it was something in the way I pasted the information, which is very possible (I took all of it from a .docx file from OnlyOffice), but now the writing is white in Night Mode.

            One other thing that occurred to me is that perhaps in the future, at some point, you could implement a Novella mode that removes the table of contents and the chaptering from the structure.

            Currently, if I want to write a Novella or Short Story, I can write everything under one chapter and treat it like it’s a one-chapter novel, however when I export it I see “Chapter 1” at the top, and for certain formats like ePub I also see the Table of Contents, which shouldn’t be present in a short story or novella.

            This is just food for thought if you ever have the opportunity or the possibility. I just thought it would be a nice-to-have feature at some point. (Unless I am missing something, and the option to clear the chaptering is already present.)

            Thank you so much for all your work and effort!!!

          3. Hugh Howey Avatar
            Hugh Howey

            The novella export was an easy fix. Thanks for catching that!

          4. Indru Maior Avatar
            Indru Maior

            @HughHowey

            No, sir! Thank YOU!!!! *raises hat*

  5. Noah Avatar
    Noah

    Is there a way to do automatic hyphenation at the end of lines? I don’t see one. That would be helpful for formatting and structure.

    Reply
    1. Hugh Howey Avatar
      Hugh Howey

      I’m not sure I understand. You want hyphens at the end of every line?

      Reply
      1. Noah Avatar
        Noah

        What I mean is automatic hyphenation so the lines’ inner and outer margins can stay the same, but the word continues on the next line. Like if I had a big word like thr-
        oughout and continued it on the next line instead of it ending the line early and just doing the entire word together by creating an entirely new lines, leaving the previous one not reaching the margin all the way. I’ll take an example for Across The Sand Chapter 1 physical copy at least. “….flanks paced behind rusty chain-link fences. Trash flut-tered in the wind.” (flut-tered) is where the line break happens and the word continues after the hyphen on the next line. Sorry, I can’t seem to find an exact term for it that I may be missing.

        Reply
        1. Hugh Howey Avatar
          Hugh Howey

          Gotcha! I thought the Kindle reader auto-hyphens in situations like that. For PDF layouts and print, you’d want to do it manually. Let me dig a little.

          Reply
          1. Noah Avatar
            Noah

            Yeah, Kindle does it automatically. On second thought, I don’t think it would be the most fitting feature for NEO. NEO is meant to remove as many variables as possible and just get in the flow. I can use NEO for the creative part and always export it to another book layout program to do the formatting and stuff.

  6. Shawn Avatar
    Shawn

    It’s great to see NEO evolving while keeping the core idea of a distraction-free writing environment intact. Small improvements to the workflow can make a surprisingly big difference when the goal is simply to stay focused and get words down. I’m a fan of similarly lightweight tools, including making documents Markdown-ready when I need reference material in a cleaner, editable format. Looking forward to seeing where NEO goes next.

    Reply
  7. Natalie Avatar
    Natalie

    Wow, I’ve only used it for five minutes and I love it already. Can’t wait to start my next project in Neo. Thank you!

    Reply
    1. Hugh Howey Avatar
      Hugh Howey

      Pleasure!

      Reply
  8. Bennett Avatar
    Bennett

    Ayyy – it works! Thanks, Hugh!

    Reply
  9. Frank Anderson Avatar
    Frank Anderson

    I’m gonna post this writing here because not about driving traffic to my blog, but I’m going be up front that it was generated in part by ChatGPT after much conversation and planning.

    I believe in being honest about the process

    —

    No Place for AI? Hugh Howey’s NEO and the Search for Honest Writing

    The biggest sin in using AI in the arts right now is dishonesty.

    It is not simply using the technology. I use it. I have been open about using it. I have explained my process in my books and on my blog, and I invite people to look closely at what I have done. Decide whether the finished work has merit. Decide whether it contains thought, experience, revision, and care—or whether it is just another piece of AI slop.

    I understand why people devalue AI-assisted work. We are drowning in material that was generated quickly, barely examined, and released by people who seem more interested in exploiting a new market than making anything worthwhile. AI did not invent that kind of opportunism. Cheap books, B-movies, exploitation films, disposable pornography, formulaic music, and imitative art existed long before anyone could type a prompt and receive a finished product. Some of that work found strange and lasting value. A great deal of it was always slop.

    AI did not create the opportunist. It gave the opportunist an assembly line.

    What Is AI Slop?

    To me, AI slop is not simply anything made with AI. It is work produced without enough human attention, judgment, revision, or responsibility.

    It may look correct. It may be grammatically clean. It may even be impressive for a few seconds. But nobody stayed with it long enough to ask whether it was honest, coherent, necessary, or alive. The creator generated it, accepted it, and released it.

    You can see this easily in AI book covers. Many are too rich. Every dial has been turned all the way up: dramatic lighting, glowing particles, perfect faces, ornate costumes, smoke, fire, impossible architecture, and elaborate lettering. The image initially looks expensive, but nothing has been restrained, so nothing feels important. It contains decoration without design.

    Music may be an even more troubling example. A complete recording can involve a songwriter, performers, studio musicians, an arranger, engineers, and a producer. Generative AI can imitate the combined result of all that labor and create thousands of tracks almost instantly. Sampling and synthesizers also transformed music, but they remained instruments that required someone to decide what fragment mattered, how it should be changed, and what new work should surround it. A music generator can now offer the voice, lyrics, arrangement, instrumentation, performance, and production at once.

    The issue is not just whether the result sounds good. It is whose identity and labor made that result possible, whether they consented, and whether the person releasing it is being honest about what happened.

    The Book Problem

    On the book side, the deepest ethical problem for me is that authors’ work has been put into AI systems without their knowledge or permission. Writers may have spent years researching and shaping a book only to see it absorbed into a system that can imitate, summarize, or compete with them.

    That issue is not comfortably distant from me.

    While working on my Seen / Unseen Greenville series, I put material from an older book about Greenville into AI. At the time, I was trying to recover historical information that was difficult to find elsewhere. I did not fully consider the ethical question of placing that author’s work into the system. I also did not credit her as clearly as I should have in the writing that followed.

    Part of me can defend the decision as preservation. The book contained local history that might otherwise remain inaccessible or disappear. The project itself was intended to examine the historical pressures underneath Greenville’s neighborhoods—the things a growing city remembers, conceals, displaces, and forgets. Recovering that information had value.

    But preservation does not erase authorship. Historical facts and an author’s expression are not the same thing. Even when information deserves to survive, the person who gathered and interpreted it deserves acknowledgment. The author is no longer in a position to grant permission herself, and I hope eventually to speak with her family, learn more about her work in Greenville’s historical community, and properly recognize what she contributed.

    That does not undo the original decision. It does mean I can take responsibility for it.

    This is why simple declarations about being “pro-AI” or “anti-AI” are not enough. The ethical questions change according to what was used, who created it, what permission existed, how substantially it shaped the result, and whether the final author tells the truth about the process.

    Then Hugh Howey Released NEO

    In August 2026, Wool author Hugh Howey released NEO, a free, distraction-free application designed specifically for writing books. It runs locally, requires no account or subscription, and keeps works in progress as readable files on the writer’s own computer. Its source code is publicly available.

    NEO is deliberately simple. It includes an outlining area, automatic chapter numbering, placeholders for facts or problems that need to be addressed later, and a “Darlings” section for passages removed from the manuscript but not discarded. Writers can set daily goals, run word sprints, enter a more restrictive distraction-free mode, and export their work into several common formats.

    What interests me most is what the current version does not appear to contain: an AI system waiting to complete the next sentence.

    There is no ever-present invitation to generate a description, rewrite a paragraph, plan the next scene, or make the prose more dramatic. When you do not know a fact or cannot solve something immediately, NEO lets you leave a placeholder and continue. The unresolved problem remains yours.

    Howey also included a feature that allows writers to email themselves timestamped PDF snapshots accompanied by a SHA-256 fingerprint. A digital fingerprint cannot prove that a human wrote the words, but it can help document that particular versions existed at particular times and were not subsequently altered. Howey has connected the idea to a growing problem: as AI becomes capable of generating not only manuscripts but simulated revision histories, writers may increasingly want some record of a work developing over time.

    NEO is still very early software. Howey himself described the initial release as not even ready for beta, and users have reported installation and formatting problems. It should not be treated as a polished answer to every writer’s needs. But its limitations may be part of what makes it interesting. It is trying to create a room for writing rather than a machine that promises to write for you.

    Drawing a Boundary

    I want to try an experiment with my next book.

    I want to develop the concept, research notes, characters, themes, and chapter outline in advance. Some of that planning may include conversations with AI. I will not pretend otherwise. Once that material is assembled, however, I want to freeze it. I want to carry the outline into NEO and write the entire first draft without AI-generated prose or further AI inspiration.

    If I cannot remember a name, I can leave a placeholder. If a transition does not work, I can mark it and keep going. If I cannot solve a scene, I can sit with it until I do. The point is not to make writing artificially difficult. The point is to discover what happens when I establish a clear boundary and protect the space on the other side of it.

    I could then describe the process honestly:

    > This book was planned through AI-assisted discussion and outlining. Every sentence of the first draft was written by me without generative assistance. Any assistance used during later revisions is identified separately.

    That statement is more meaningful than calling the book either “AI-written” or “AI-free.” The outline would influence the manuscript, so claiming complete freedom from AI would be false. But planning assistance is also not the same as asking a system to manufacture the sentences and scenes.

    I am curious about what my voice will sound like in that space. Not because I believe AI has erased my voice from my previous work, but because I want evidence rather than anxiety. I want to compare a deliberately human-drafted manuscript with the writing I have developed through a more collaborative process. I may discover weaknesses. I may discover abilities I have not trusted enough. Either result would teach me something.

    Human Writing Should Include Humans

    Writing without AI-generated prose does not mean writing without help.

    My goal has always been to include more people in the process. If I had more money for professional editing, I would use it. I would like to work with beta readers who can tell me where they became engaged, where they became confused, and where the language felt too polished or distant from me. That process has been difficult because sharing autobiographical work can make criticism feel like a judgment of the life behind it. Confidence and mental health are real barriers, even when collaboration is something I value.

    But the answer is not necessarily isolation. It may be a smaller and safer human process: one chapter, one trusted reader, and a few specific questions at a time. Human authors have always relied on editors, readers, researchers, conversations, and other writers. Receiving help is not the same as surrendering authorship.

    The meaningful distinction is responsibility. Who made the decisions? Who examined the language? Who rejected what did not belong? Who remained with the work when the easy answer was not good enough? Who finally stood behind it?

    Is There a Place for AI-Assisted Writing?

    I believe there is a vacuum in the market for a place that collects worthwhile, transparently AI-assisted writing. But it cannot simply be an unrestricted dumping ground for generated books. That would become an ocean of slop almost immediately.

    What is missing is closer to a curated literary journal or selective press—one where every work includes a clear account of its process. Readers could see whether AI was used for brainstorming, outlining, research organization, developmental discussion, sentence-level editing, generated passages, or most of the manuscript. The work would still have to survive human editorial review.

    The promise would not be that AI makes literature better. The promise would be that nobody is hiding how the literature was made.

    The current reaction against AI may make such a project difficult. It may also be precisely why one is needed. Readers are being asked to choose between blanket rejection and blind acceptance when many of the real questions exist between those extremes. They deserve enough information to decide what kinds of assistance they will accept.

    No Place—or the Right Place?

    I do not think AI has no place in writing. I think it needs a defined place.

    It can help someone organize years of memories, challenge an idea, locate a weakness, or see a structure that was previously hidden. It can also imitate an author, exploit uncredited labor, flatten a voice, and allow someone to publish work they have barely read. The technology does not erase the difference between those acts.

    NEO appeals to me because it offers something increasingly rare: an empty page that does not immediately volunteer to fill itself.

    My experiment will not prove that my work is purer than anyone else’s. It will not resolve every ethical question about AI, including the questions raised by the planning stage itself. It will simply establish an honest boundary: AI may help me draw the map, but I will walk the ground and write down what I find.

    There may be a place for AI in the process. There must also remain a place where it stops.

    Reply

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