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If you’re not starting from scratch, this is the path: bring your draft in, let Quarkle read it, and check its work before you lean on it.

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Bring in your draft

1

Open Import

In the editor’s left rail, click Import.
2

Choose your file

Quarkle imports PDF, Markdown (.md), and plain-text (.txt) files. Pick one or several at once.
3

It's brought in as chapters

Each file becomes one or more chapters in your manuscript map. Large files may take a moment.
Import opens your system’s file picker directly, there’s no in-app dialog to walk through. Full reference: Import & export.
The Quarkle editor with its left rail, manuscript, and Creative Companion panels

The three-panel editor, your imported chapters on the left.

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Let the Atlas build itself

You don’t need to set anything up. As soon as your chapters are in, Quarkle starts building the Story Atlas: characters, world, a summary per chapter. This first pass reads each chapter in full; later edits only re-read the diff.
The Story Atlas file tree with System notes and auto-discovered Character and World notes

The Story Atlas filling in from an imported manuscript.

It runs in the background at low priority, so it won’t compete with anything you’re doing. Watch the sync status; when it stops spinning, the Atlas has caught up. A big manuscript can take a few minutes.
Don’t start asking Chat detailed questions about your world the moment an import finishes. Give the sync a minute to actually complete first, otherwise you’re asking about characters the Atlas hasn’t built profiles for yet.

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Check its work before you lean on it

Once the first sync finishes, don’t just trust it blind. Spend ten minutes reviewing what Quarkle inferred:
1

Skim the character list

Open each character note it created. Are the role, personality, and relationships right? These are Quarkle’s best inference from the text, not verified facts.
2

Check the world entries

Same idea for places, factions, or rules of your world it picked up on.
3

Read a chapter summary or two

Spot-check that summaries actually track what happens. If your manuscript has a complex POV structure or unreliable narration, this is where it’s most likely to need a correction.
4

Fix what's wrong, freeze what's right

Edit anything inaccurate directly. Once a note is correct, freeze it so it stays that way.
This upfront check matters more the longer and more complex your manuscript is. A 5,000-word short story’s Atlas is easy to verify at a glance; a 100,000-word novel with a dozen POV characters is worth the ten minutes before you lean on Chat for relationships across the whole book.

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Write your standing preferences once

Have voice, tense, or style rules that should apply from your first new chapter? Set them now instead of repeating them in every chat. Open Your preferences in the Atlas, or just tell Chat directly and it’ll record them for you. See Memory.

Next: Undoing a Bad Edit

Checkpoints, restores, and Atlas version history, and when to reach for which.