Record changes instead of overwriting them: a character's history you can read back

When something changes in a story, the natural thing to do in a notes app is to edit the note. Rowan was a scout of the Crown Watch; now he informs for the Ashen Circle; you open his card and change "Crown Watch" to "Ashen Circle". The card is correct. The story bible has also just forgotten that Rowan ever served the Watch, when he stopped, and why, which is exactly what you will need when Captain Aldric, his old friend, finally learns the truth in chapter 14.

If you want to track character changes over time rather than only their latest state, the two acts have to be separate. In Lokee, editing a field at Current changes what is true now. Recording a change adds to the field's history: from this moment in your world, or this point in the manuscript, the value is this. This guide shows both ways to record a change, how to read history back, how relationships change over time, what to do when the stored value and the history disagree, and how all of this differs from the Revisions log.

The examples come from The Ashen Circle, the demo story. If you have not set up world points yet, read three kinds of when first: every recorded change sits at a point, and the points come from there.

Why you should track character changes over time, not overwrite them

A novel is a document about change. Characters gain and lose titles, move between cities, switch sides, marry, die. A database that only holds the latest value is a snapshot of your book's last page, and every earlier chapter has to be checked against it by memory.

Overwriting causes three practical failures:

1. Earlier chapters contradict the card. You revise chapter 3, glance at Rowan's card for his allegiance, and write him as a rebel two years too early.
2. Nobody can tell when it changed. A co-author sees "Ashen Circle" and has no way to know whether that was always true.
3. Cause and effect disconnect. The riot that turned Rowan is a scene in your outline; his allegiance is a field on his card; nothing ties them together.

Recording fixes all three without making you do more work later. The card keeps showing the present, and the past is there when you ask for it.

The quick way: Record a change… beside a field

On the entity card, each field Lokee can track over time has a small Record a change… link beside it. (In the Wiki view infobox, where space is tight, it is a clock icon with the same label as its tooltip.)

Click it beside Rowan's Allegiance and a dialog asks three questions:

• When: Choose a moment… lists every world point, timeline by timeline and in order, followed by every story point from the Writer's narrative order. The hint reminds you that moments come from both places.
• It becomes: the new value, edited the same way as on the card: text, a number, a date in your calendar, a place from your vault.
• Why (optional): a short note. The placeholder says "The Battle of Kelmar"; for Rowan you might write "Sees the Watch fire on the grain queue".

Press Record. The dialog explains the effect in its first line: "What you have now stays as it is until that moment." That is the key rule. Recording never changes the current value. If the new value is also true today, edit the field at Current as well. Usually it already is, because you are recording a change you already made in your head.

There is deliberately no "now" in the list. Current is edited at Current; offering it here would just recreate the silent overwrite this dialog exists to avoid. And if your world has no points yet, the dialog says so and offers Go to the Timeline instead of an empty list.

Record the starting value too

Before the earliest recorded change, Lokee shows that earliest record's value, marked earliest recorded. It never guesses what came before. So if Rowan's history should start as "Crown Watch", record "Crown Watch" at an early point, such as "Rowan takes the Watch oath", and "Ashen Circle" at "The eastern wall riot". Two records, and every moment before, between and after reads correctly.

The thorough way: the History tab

Each entity page has a History tab. Its lower half is a form titled Record a change, built for recording several changes at one moment:

1. Axis: World chronology or Narrative order. World is when it happened; narrative is when the reader is told.
2. At: the point on that axis.
3. Field: any field Lokee can track, including the built-in Name, Description, Tags and Aliases.
4. Change: Set to or Clear for single values; for a List field also Add and Remove, which change one item without retyping the rest.
5. Add to this record puts the change in the pending record so you can add another field at the same point.
6. Record 3 changes (the count follows the list) writes them together.

The form repeats the rule underneath: "Recording a change describes the past. It never changes the entity's current value."

Use it when one moment changes a character in several ways at once. At "The eastern wall riot" Rowan's Allegiance becomes Ashen Circle, his List of titles loses "Scout of the night patrol", and his Location becomes the Gilded Lantern. One record, three changes, one point.

Above the form, Recorded changes lists every record in order: world records along each timeline first, then narrative records in reading order. Each shows its point, its changes and a Delete button. Two warnings can appear on a record. "Not placed on either axis" marks a change that has no point yet (these come from AI review, below). "Its point can no longer be found, so this change is not applied" marks a record whose world point you deleted; such a record is invisible until dealt with, and the continuity check lists it as a problem.

Correcting a record

A record in the list cannot be edited in place; there is only Delete. To change what a record says, set Viewing to its point, edit the field on the card, and choose Edit the record that set this value when Lokee asks What does this edit mean? To move a record to a different moment, delete it and record it again at the right point. Deleting a recorded change leaves an entry on the Revisions page saying what was removed, so even that is traceable.

Reading history back: ⟲ and "Why is it this?"

Any field with recorded history gets a ⟲ marker with a count beside it: "⟲ 2" on Rowan's Allegiance. Click it for a popover titled History of Allegiance. It opens with Why is Allegiance this? and then lists every recorded change in order.

The "why" line is the useful part. It answers in one of four ways:

• Changed during an event, with the point, when the change was recorded as an event's effect (see planning plot with story events).
• Recorded at a point, when you recorded it by hand.
• Typed directly, when the value was simply typed at Current and has no history behind it.
• Changed outside Lokee's history, when the stored value disagrees with history (the drift case below).

With Viewing set to a past moment, the popover answers for that moment, and with Compare it answers for both sides. That makes "why does Rowan read as a rebel in chapter 4?" a two-click question.

Fields with no history show no ⟲ at all. History is optional field by field: track the five things that change and leave the other fifty alone.

Relationships change too

Rowan did not just change a field; he left one organisation and joined another. In Lokee those are relationships, and relationships have their own history: they begin, they end, they change type, and family links can change certainty.

To record relationship changes, set Viewing to the point ("The eastern wall riot") and open Rowan's Relationships tab. A notice says you are seeing relationships as they were at that moment and that changing one first asks what you mean. Each relationship row offers:

• Type…: the relationship changes type at this point. Aldric Knows Rowan; from the night Aldric learns the truth, he is Rival Of him.
• Lineage…: certainty becomes Confirmed, Alleged, Unknown or Disputed, for parentage the story reveals or contests. The guide on family sagas and succession shows how a disputed parentage plays out on the tree.
• Ended here… on a relationship in effect, or Began here… on one listed under Not in effect here.

For Rowan: Ended here… on Member Of the Crown Watch. Then + Add a relationship that began here: type Member Of, entity The Ashen Circle, and leave Still true now ticked, because he is still a member today. Unticked, the relationship is kept only as history and the current relationships do not change. This is one of the few places with that tick; the others are event effects and AI review.

Deleting a relationship with history

At Current, deleting a relationship that has recorded history opens This relationship has recorded history. You can say when It ended at (optional), then choose Keep it as history — it’s over now or Delete it and its history. Keeping it means the graph at an earlier moment still shows the connection, and it appears at Current under Kept as history with Put back and Delete with its history buttons. For a death, a divorce or a broken alliance, keep it.

When the card and the history disagree

Normally the value on the card and the end of a field's history agree, or differ only because you chose so. Lokee keeps a note of the value it last wrote for every field with history. If the stored value changes without passing through Lokee, most likely through an older version of Lokee, the History tab shows a box headed The stored value no longer matches the recorded history, with both values: Stored and Last saved in Lokee.

You get three choices, and Lokee makes none of them for you:

• Keep the new value: accept the stored value; Lokee records it as the latest change at the end of the canonical timeline.
• Put back the previous value: restore what Lokee last wrote.
• Review: narrow the history list to that field so you can look before deciding.

The same choices appear for relationships under Relationship history, and the continuity check lists every entity field in this state under "Changed outside history" so none goes unnoticed.

Revisions are not history

Some edits are not events in your world at all. You decided Iseult's eyes are green, not blue. Nothing happened in Duskhollow; you changed your mind. Lokee calls that a revision.

Every edit to the model itself is logged on the Revisions page: what it was, what it is now, and where you made it: Entity page, Relationships, Recorded changes, AI extraction, Capture, Import, Writer or Map. Use Filter by what changed… and Where it happened to find one, and add a reason in Why? (optional), the only editable part, because the rest is a record. In cloud vaults Revisions is in the sidebar; in a local vault on the desktop app, open it from the search palette (Ctrl+K or ⌘+K) with Go to revisions.

The page states the distinction plainly: renaming Aria to "Queen Aria" is a revision; Aria becoming queen at the Coronation is a change over time. A revision never appears on a timeline and never resolves into anything. If something happened in the story, record a change at a point instead.

A rule of thumb: if a reader of the finished book could say "on this day, this became true", it is a recorded change. If only you, the author, could say "on this day, I changed this", it is a revision.

State Timeline is a scratchpad

Entity cards also have a State Timeline section with milestone and note boxes. Its own description is precise: "Notes only — they never change a value, and Viewing does not read them." It is fine for "Ch. 3 — starting to doubt Sera" while drafting. Anything you will want to see when Viewing a past moment belongs in a recorded change.

Letting AI propose changes

If you extract from the manuscript in the Writer with Find changes over time ticked (on the Import page the same step is called Changes over time), the review screen gains a Changes over time tab: changes the text describes, none recorded until you accept them. For each you choose a World point (or Create a world point…), where the Reader learns it in, and whether it is Still true now. You can also Leave unresolved; such a change is kept with no point, the continuity check lists it as "Not placed yet", and there is currently no button to place it later. Delete it on the History tab and record it again at the right point when you know. Extraction uses AI and, in cloud vaults, Lokee credits; see turning a draft into a story bible.

Rowan's turn, end to end

Here is the whole sequence for one character, done the way I would do it on a card that so far only says Allegiance "Ashen Circle" and Location "The Gilded Lantern".

1. Points. On the Timeline, make sure "Rowan takes the Watch oath" and "The eastern wall riot" exist, in that order, and in the Writer add a story point in chapter 14, "Aldric learns the truth".
2. The before. On Rowan's card, Record a change… beside Allegiance: at "Rowan takes the Watch oath", it becomes "Crown Watch". Beside Location: at the same point, it becomes The Watch House.
3. The turn. Open the History tab and use the form, because three things change at once. Axis World chronology, At "The eastern wall riot". Allegiance Set to Ashen Circle, Add to this record. Location Set to The Gilded Lantern, Add. Titles Remove "Scout of the night patrol", Add. Record 3 changes.
4. The memberships. Set Viewing to "The eastern wall riot", open Relationships. Ended here… on Member Of The Crown Watch. + Add a relationship that began here: Member Of, The Ashen Circle, Still true now ticked.
5. The reveal. Still at the riot? No: this one is for the reader. Back to the History form, Axis Narrative order, At "Chapter 14 — Aldric learns the truth", Allegiance Set to Ashen Circle. (If your vault's narrative setting is Show the canon value, you can skip this, since the reader is assumed to know canon until you say otherwise.)
6. Read it back. Allegiance now carries "⟲ 2". Click it: Why is Allegiance this? answers Recorded at The eastern wall riot. Set Viewing to "Rowan takes the Watch oath": Crown Watch, Location The Watch House, Member Of The Crown Watch in effect. Set it to the riot: everything flipped. Open the Graph at the oath and the line to the Watch is there; at Current it is gone, and the Relationships tab lists it under Kept as history.

Six steps, and every chapter between the oath and the riot can now be checked against the Rowan of that time rather than the Rowan of the last page.

Common mistakes

Recording the change and then wondering why the card didn't update. It is the rule, not a bug: recording describes the past. If the new value is true today, set it at Current. Only event Effects, AI review and + Add a relationship that began here offer Still true now.

Recording at the wrong axis. The riot is a world point; Aldric learning the truth is a story point. If you record "Ashen Circle" only at chapter 14, Viewing any world point shows the Watch, because the world never heard. The narrative order vs chronological order guide is the fix if this keeps happening.

Overwriting a Text field that should have been a List. Titles, scars and languages change one item at a time. A Text field forces you to retype the whole value at every change and the history reads as four slightly different sentences. Make it a List and use Add and Remove.

Deleting a relationship instead of ending it. Aldric and Rowan's friendship is over, so you delete Knows. Now the graph at chapter 1 shows them as strangers. Use Ended here… at the point, or at Current choose Keep it as history — it’s over now.

Fixing one wrong record by adding another at the same point. Two values at one point is a contradiction the check will flag. Delete the wrong one, or use Edit the record that set this value from a past Viewing.

Treating revisions as story. You renamed the Gilded Lantern to the Gilded Lamp; that is a revision, and it stays off the timeline. If the tavern was renamed in the story after a fire, that is a recorded change to Name at the point of the fire.

What Lokee doesn't do here

A record cannot be edited in place or moved to another point; the route is delete and re-record, or edit the value from a past Viewing. A change left unresolved from AI review cannot be placed later from the History tab; it too is a delete and re-record. And nothing infers the "before" for you: if you only ever record the "after", every earlier moment shows it with earliest recorded, and the only cure is the starting value, typed by you. They are listed here so you do not spend ten minutes looking for a button that is not there.

In five minutes

When a scene changes something about a character, do this before moving on:

1. Make sure the moment exists as a world point (and, if it is a reveal, as a story point).
2. Record the change there, with the old value at an earlier point if this is the field's first record.
3. If the relationship side changed, set Viewing to the point and use Ended here… or + Add a relationship that began here.
4. If it is still true now, check that Current says so.
5. Click the field's ⟲ and read the answer to Why is it this? If it says Typed directly, step 2 did not happen.

It takes under a minute per change, and the payoff is that every earlier chapter can be checked against the world as it was then. The same loop fits inside a drafting day, as worldbuilding while you write describes. The help's Entities over time and Revisions sections summarise the same controls, and the character timeline tracker page shows how this looks across a cast. Next, see how one event can record many changes at once in planning plot with story events.