How OpusDraft actually works.
The full breakdown — for the people who want to see the machinery before they trust it. No marketing here, just the system.
A system, not a checklist
Any tool can announce that it has “canon.” Another can claim “verification.” A third can advertise version history. On a comparison chart, the features look identical.
What’s harder to see — and harder to copy — is how the pieces have to interlock to actually work:
Canon without verification is just notes the AI can ignore. Verification without refusal is a cleanup pass that ships inconsistent prose anyway. Refusal without inheritance breaks the moment you start book two. Inheritance without version history loses the audit trail. Version history without visible enforcement is just disk space.
The five-step editorial pass
When you run Full Polish, OpusDraft performs a five-step agentic editorial pass against your canon, rules, and voice — and it stops the moment your work holds. It runs only as far as needed; if a passage is already right, it says so and leaves it alone.
The result is shown side-by-side with your original, for accept-or-discard. Nothing is applied silently.
The seven guarantees, in full
Canon enforcement is hard refusal, not optional context. Add a character's mother's death in Book 1, and the AI cannot generate prose that brings her back in Book 3 without your explicit consent. Names stay names. Magic systems stay coherent. Place names stay spelled the way you spelled them.
Every AI output runs through verify-on-fail before delivery. If the prose violates your rules, OpusDraft tells you honestly, with alternatives — instead of silently shipping inconsistent prose and asking you to police it after the fact. Most tools verify after, if at all. OpusDraft verifies first.
The anti-fabrication pack refuses to invent scripture references, academic citations, statistics, or proper names — auto-enabled in Presentation mode, where invented quotes are most costly. Other tools invent confidently when they don't know. OpusDraft says it doesn't know.
When your prose is already at the right level, OpusDraft returns "No changes needed" — with a working-editor explanation of why it didn't touch the passage. Most tools maximize "the AI did something," which produces over-editing. Improve reads like an editor who respects the manuscript on the page.
Series mode lets canon, rule packs, and voice live one level up — at the series, not just the book. Every book inherits them automatically, with per-book toggles for where books legitimately diverge. The AI working on Book 3 sees what you locked in Book 1. No re-entry required.
Version history snapshots before every AI Apply — labeled with which tool fired and which intent. A side-by-side diff shows exactly what changed. One-click restore is itself reversible (it snapshots before restoring). Word and Google Docs have version history; only OpusDraft pairs it with AI awareness.
Apply / Discard panels for every AI edit. Drift indicators when book-level canon overrides series-level. Refusal banners when verification fails. Named "Sent for review" stamps on export. Cmd+K search across every chapter, canon entry, and version label. The trust layer is visible at every interaction.
Series inheritance
Most tools forget the moment you start a new file. OpusDraft treats a series as the unit: the canon, rule packs, and voice you set live at the series level and flow into every book in the arc. Start Book 3 and the system already knows the magic system, the dead characters, the spellings, and the voice you established in Book 1 — with per-book overrides for the places a book is meant to break pattern.
Version history that understands AI
Word and Google Docs have version history. Only OpusDraft pairs it with AI awareness: every snapshot is labeled with which AI tool fired and why, so the audit trail tells you not just what changed but what intent produced it. The diff is side-by-side; restore is one click and itself reversible.
Bring your own key — and your data stays yours
Every paid tier is BYOK. You bring your own Anthropic API key — OpusDraft doesn’t touch your usage, doesn’t bill for AI, and never raises your AI prices. Typical cost for a steady writer runs $2–10/month, paid to Anthropic directly. OpusDraft charges for the platform, the enforcement layer, the editor, and the export pipeline.