Hello from Quillium
Why I built a non-linear prose editor.
Writing is thinking. That means editing is a core part of it.
Quillium started because I was frustrated with how every existing tool treats revision as an afterthought—or even worse, as damage to undo. Every writing tool I used assumed I knew where I was going, and I didn’t. I’d write a sentence, then rewrite it a completely different way, then try a third angle. Each time, I’d either lose the previous version or drown in a mess of copied paragraphs and files named draft_v3_FINAL_REAL.docx.
The problem isn’t that writers revise too much; it’s that our tools punish us for it.
So I built Quillium. The core idea is simple: what if you could fork a sentence the way a programmer forks code? Keep every version alive and navigate between them.
Great writing needs two things: space to think and tools to refine, not forms to fill out or approval chains to navigate. Quillium is my attempt at building both.
I’m in early development and things are still rough around the edges. If this resonates, come try it.
What to read next
I’ll be writing more about the ideas behind Quillium on this blog. Here’s a reading order if you want to go deeper:
- Quillium Is Not an AI App — Why everyone assumes every new writing tool is AI-powered, and why Quillium isn’t.
- More in depth: AI Is Not the Point — Why Quillium’s AI features are off by default, and why writers are right to be suspicious.
- The Myth of the First Draft — Why “just finish the draft” is bad advice, and why writing is exploration, not a pipeline.
- Why the Undo Button Is a Lie — The technical argument: undo is a stack, and stacks are the wrong data structure for revision.
- Why Version Control for Writing Should Work Like Git — How programmers solved this problem decades ago, and why writers deserve the same tools.
- How to Manage Multiple Drafts Without Losing Your Mind — The specific pain point that pushed me to build Quillium.
- Writing Tools That Support Non-Linear Thinking — A survey of what’s out there and what’s still missing.
- The Best Alternatives to Google Docs for Serious Writers — An honest look at Scrivener, Ulysses, Notion, iA Writer, and where Quillium fits.
- Branching Narrative Writing Software — What exists, what doesn’t, and what writers actually need.