An honest build log.
Written by the people doing the work, not by marketing. When something broke, it says so.
- Improved
Voices stay truer to the one you cast
AI voices now hold their character more steadily through a render, and re-rendering a line reproduces the same take instead of rolling a fresh-sounding voice. We also rebuilt the audition clips so the voice you hear while casting matches what you get when you render.
- Added
Reorder and delete chapters
You can now drag chapters into a new order on the book page and delete a chapter you no longer need. Deleting a chapter that already has a script or rendered audio asks you to confirm first, and the remaining chapters renumber automatically.
- Improved
Editing the script got smoother
Inserting a new line now opens its text box with the cursor ready, so you can type what it says right away and pick the speaker from the dropdown. And when a single line fails to render, the studio suggests what to try based on that line — linking a very short one to a neighbor, or splitting a very long one — instead of a generic retry message.
- Improved
Start a new book by importing a manuscript
The New project button now offers to import a manuscript straight away — Word, PDF, EPUB, Markdown, or plain text — so you don’t have to create an empty book first.
- Added
Carry a cast between books as a file
You can export a book’s cast to a file and import it into another book or account — handy for a team producing a series. It uses the same format as cast rosters.
- Fixed
Parsing keeps narration like “he said”
The director AI no longer drops dialogue tags such as “he said” or “she whispered” when it scripts a chapter. Every word of your manuscript is kept and read by the narrator.
- Added
Import EPUB files
The manuscript importer now reads EPUB files alongside Word, PDF, Markdown, and plain text. It follows the book’s reading order from the EPUB spine and detects chapters automatically, the same as any other upload.
- Added
A guided tour on your first visit
The first time you open the studio, an interactive walkthrough sets up a short sample book and guides you through the whole workflow: pasting a manuscript, casting voices, previewing and re-previewing lines, rendering, and exporting. It runs the real pipeline for you without spending any credits, keeps the controls focused on one step at a time so nothing gets lost, and can be skipped whenever you like. You can replay it any time from Settings.
- Improved
Jump straight to a render error
When a line fails to render, the studio now shows how many lines errored and gives you a button to jump to the next one. It selects the line and scrolls it into view, so you can fix and re-render without hunting through the chapter.
- Improved
A roomier default pause between lines
New chapters now default to a half-second pause between lines instead of a quarter-second, which reads more naturally for most narration. You can still set the chapter-wide pause and override it on any individual line.
- Added
Plans and top-ups are live
You can now subscribe to a plan or buy credit top-ups right in the studio. Three monthly plans (Indie, Creator, and Professional) and one-time top-up bundles are available, with secure checkout and a self-serve billing portal for your subscription, payment method, and invoices. Credits land in your balance the moment a payment clears. The free trial still gives you an hour of finished audio to start.
- Added
Cast rosters keep a series consistent
Save a book’s cast as a reusable roster and apply it to the next book in the series, so recurring characters keep the same voice. When the director AI parses new chapters, it recognizes returning characters by name or alias and casts them automatically instead of starting from scratch. Manage your rosters from the new Cast Rosters page.
- Added
A Help Center for every step
Step-by-step guides now ship with the studio, covering each screen in order: creating a book, importing a manuscript, casting voices, directing lines, pronunciations, rendering and credits, review, and exporting an ACX-ready file, plus a billing and FAQ reference. Reach it from the site navigation and footer, or from inside the studio, where it opens in a new tab so you keep your place while you work.
- Added
The whole pipeline, working end to end
Render now reserves and settles credits honestly (failed lines are never charged), previews play real audio, chapter masters assemble automatically, and book export produces a chaptered M4B you can actually download. The studio gained line editing, speaker reassignment, re-parse, autosave, per-line playback, and a real progress bar. Also new: this page, the rest of the public site, and legal policies.
- Fixed
Manuscript parsing fixed
The parse step was calling a model alias that does not exist on our AI platform, so every manuscript failed with a server error. Parsing now runs on a stable GA model, and we completed a full audit of the production app to catch anything else pretending to work.
- Fixed
Login repaired, render pipeline wired
Google sign-in works end to end again, the AI render pipeline is connected to the studio, and deploys now follow a written runbook instead of tribal memory.
- Infrastructure
Platform hardening
Next.js security patches from the May advisories, Node 24 across the stack, and a stabler Cloud Run deployment after a week of wrestling hosting adapters.
- Added
First brick
Initial release: the marketing site, Google-only sign-in with an hour of trial credits, the studio scaffold, and a thirty-voice library with auditions.