Every Story. Preserved.

Your world got too big for scattered notes.

Stop drowning in scattered notes, disconnected documents, and lost details. Chronicle Vault gives you one secure Lockbox to build worlds, track continuity, and write complete stories — all in one place. Built to give your project structure without taking control away from you.

Rename anything later without breaking a single link
No subscription, buy it once
No account, no cloud sync, works fully offline
Available for Windows · macOS coming soon · $49 once, no subscription
Chronicle Vault character sheet showing an Entry Archive and cross-linked notes

Writing gets harder when your story gets bigger.

Character notes scattered across a dozen documents
Contradictions in continuity you don't catch until it's too late
Plot details you know you wrote down somewhere
A folder of files that don't talk to each other
Chronicle Vault brings it all together.
Who it's for

If any of that sounds familiar, this is built for you.

Anyone with a project full of people, places, sources, or terms that recur across hundreds of pages, the kind of thing you lose track of in a folder full of documents, lives here. A few of the people who use Chronicle Vault:

Novelists & Screenwriters

A cast and world that hold together

Track characters, locations, and lore across one book or an entire series — or build out a cast and scene breakdown for a script. Archives catch every "before" version when something changes, so no earlier draft of a character is ever truly gone.

Worldbuilders & Game Masters

A campaign world that remembers itself

Build out the people, places, factions, and history of a setting once, then keep it straight across every session, sourcebook, or campaign that draws on it. Player Characters, NPCs, and Creatures each get their own tab so nothing gets lost in the same pile.

Journalists & Investigators

Sources secured, case files organized

Keep interview notes, source details, persons of interest, and evidence together — offline, on your own machine, protected by real encryption. Whether you're protecting a source or protecting your IP, nothing has to touch a server to get organized.

Researchers & Nonfiction Writers

Every source, where you put it

Track sources, recurring terms, and key figures across a thesis, dissertation, or long-form nonfiction project. Link them wherever they come up. Backlinks show you every place you've referenced each one, without maintaining an index by hand.

Memoirists & Biographers

A life, kept in order

Track the people, places, and dates of a life story on a timeline, with every name linked back to where they appear throughout the manuscript. Primary sources, gaps in the record, and research notes all live in the same file as the writing.

True Crime Writers

The whole story, pieced together

Real investigations have too many moving parts for a folder of documents. Witnesses, evidence, timelines, and persons of interest all get structured homes — linked to each other and to the manuscript you're building around them.

How it works

Built around how a project actually grows.

Start loose, get specific, and let everything stay connected — all the way to a finished manuscript.

Worldbuilding

Everything in one place, all connected.

Characters, Locations, Organizations, Timelines, Sources — each gets a structured home. When something changes, archive the current state and keep writing. Create custom tabs for anything your project needs, from Creatures to Evidence to Factions.

Rename anything, anytime — links never break
Archive entries to track how characters and places change over time
Custom tabs for anything your project needs
Chronicle Vault character sheet with archive pills and linked notes
The linking system

Connect everything you've built.

Highlight any word in a note, chapter, or description and link it to the entry it belongs to. Every entry shows its own Backlinks panel — find every place your villain appears, every chapter that touches a location, without digging for it by hand.

Link text doesn't have to match the entry name
Click a linked word to navigate there instantly
Backlinks are automatic — no setup or maintenance
Backlinks panel showing everywhere a character is mentioned
Manuscript

Everything you built feeds the story.

All roads lead here. Every character, place, event, and note you've built is one click away while you write. Add as many books as your series needs — your world carries across all of them.

Chapter snapshots let you compare drafts and restore the one that works
Export to PDF, Word, or EPUB whenever it's ready
Chronicle Vault manuscript editor with linked character names in the text
See the full feature breakdown →
Your data, your machine

Offline-first. Locked up properly.

Even well-run cloud services get breached. Chronicle Vault sidesteps the question entirely: your Lockboxes live on your computer, not on a server somewhere, protected by real encryption and automatic backups you control.

For some users that's a preference. For others — journalists protecting sources, investigators keeping case notes, researchers handling sensitive material, writers with unpublished IP — it's a hard requirement. My work stays on my machine. Mine means mine. Chronicle Vault is built around that belief.

🔒

Real encryption, not a gimmick

Lock a Lockbox with a PIN and it's protected with AES-256 encryption, the same standard used by password managers and financial software. Without the PIN, the file is unreadable.

Automatic local backups

Chronicle Vault quietly keeps recent backups of every project as you work. If a file ever gets corrupted or you need to undo something drastic, an earlier version is already sitting there waiting.

Nothing leaves your computer

There's no cloud sync and no account required to write. Your Lockboxes live on your machine, in a format only you control.

Setting a combination to lock a Lockbox, with an option to show or hide the digits
Set a 4 to 8 digit combination. Your Lockbox stays encrypted until you dial it back in.

Not ready to commit? Try it for free.

Install the real app and use it free for 7 days, no payment required. See how it fits your project before you decide.

Start free trial →
The comparison

Why writers choose Chronicle Vault.

Chronicle Vault Most Writing Apps
Pricing Buy once Monthly subscription
Where your files live Fully offline Cloud dependent
Ownership You own your files Locked into a platform
Scope Worldbuilding and writing together Usually only one or the other
Who controls the workflow You do — structure without lock-in The app does
Pricing

Buy it once. It's yours.

No subscription, no recurring fee, no "your notes are held hostage if you stop paying."

Chronicle Vault
Full License
$49
One-time · 2 devices · yours forever
Every feature, no tiers or upsells
Use on up to 2 devices
Free updates for the life of the app
Works fully offline, your data stays on your machine
Buy Chronicle Vault — $49
Not ready to buy? Start a free trial instead. 7 days, full access, no payment required.
Secure checkout and license management via Lemon Squeezy. Windows · macOS coming soon.

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