The Shorthand AI Creative Companion is an assistant that helps with your story content.

Use it as much or as little as you wish: from small text edits, finding appropriate images, creating new sections in your story, or even creating a whole draft story for you from scratch: complete with text, images, charts, or whatever is appropriate to your story.

The Companion can be accessed from the dashboard when starting a new story, or within the Editor when working on an existing story.

Click the New story button on the dashboard and you'll see a modal window from which you may choose a template, start with a blank story, import a story, or use the AI Creative Companion:

When you choose to start with the AI Creative Companion, the modal will change to an interface through which you and the Companion converse:

Add a description for your story in the input box. Be as descriptive as you wish. You can use a few words, or a detailed description of the story subject, its intended audience, message aims: whatever you believe will help the Companion understand your intent.

In the bottom-left corner of the input box, you'll also see a paperclip button. Clicking it enables you to attach documents or files that the Companion can reference or use in creating the story including:

Depending on your input, the Companion may ask a few (or many) questions to help understand your aims. For instance it may ask for more detail about your audience or content aims, or if you have added images or supporting documents you may be asked if they are intended to be used as-is or only as a guide to influence content.

Answer the Companion's questions by entering long-form answers, typing the corresponding letter or number, or choosing from supplied button-options. ...or provide further instructions of your own with more text. In the image above the Companion presents two buttons with which to easily asnswer if the attached document is to be used as a Reference or Used verbatim. You could click either of those buttons or ignore them and instead type that you'd like it to: "Use the story structure from the text but to simplify the language while using all the images from the document. " ...or any other instruction.

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After answering some questions the Companion will present some starter story layouts to choose from including one that is a simple text-only version of the story, and others that have been styled with images and effects:

Each can be previewed, or chosen to take into the Editor for further refinement. A small arrow to the right of the presented options will trigger the Companion to generate more alternatives.

When you choose a layout, the Editor opens with a smaller version of the Companion window also open. Close the Companion or continue to interact with it through this smaller window: asking it for further assistance in modifying your story.

The Companion window can be dragged around the screen so as to not obscure the content you are editing. ...or close it completely and re-open it again later.

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Within the Shorthand Editor, the AI Creative Companion can be accessed by clicking its tab at the top of the screen. Close the Companion with the button in its top-right corner.

If you access the Companion again, it will have remembered your previous interactions about the same story.

With the Companion open, you may ask it to help you with small or large changes. Depending on the complexity of the request it may ask for further clarifying information or simply make the requested change. Try asking it to "add a gallery of appropriate images", "make the introductory section longer", "change the title to red" or even "restyle the whole story".

If your request involves adding images to the story, the Companion may offer you multiple images to choose from. These could be images that are already present in the story, or new images obtained from unsplash.com by the Companion.

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Many things. Add content, change the style of existing content, reword sections to be longer or more succinct, apply effects, move sections... and more. Ask it to make a change to your story, and it will try its best, asking for clarification when it believes that will be beneficial.

The Creative Companion is here to help you with creative changes. It can't publish your story, make changes to your workspace, or interact with other members of your workspace on your behalf, and it sticks to the features and functionality that are available with your specific Shorthand plan.