Parlance

Your first project

Goal: a running editor, a scaffolded project, one character, one dialogue — and a feel for where everything lives. ~10 minutes.

1. Open a project

Launch Parlance and point it at a project folder — most often the directory of the game repository your story belongs to. (Install & run covers getting the app and what it writes where.)

To start from nothing, scaffold the standard layout first:

parlance init my-story

That creates the data/ subdirectories for each entity type, ready to open. (It refuses to scaffold into a directory that doesn't look intentional, so you can't accidentally seed your Downloads folder.)

2. Learn the four regions

The editor is one screen with four fixed regions:

  1. Type sidebar (far left) — one row per entity type with a live count. Reports is pinned to its footer.
  2. Entity list — search, group, and a + New button for the selected type.
  3. Main panel — a form for most entities; a canvas for dialogues and quests; the location map or Reports when no entity is selected.
  4. Validation bar (bottom) — live error/warning counts, collapsed to a status row until you click it.

Press Cmd/Ctrl+K now — the command palette fuzzy-matches every entity and action in the project and is the fastest way anywhere. Make it a habit on day one.

3. Create a character

  1. Select Characters in the sidebar, click + New.
  2. Give it an id — npc_gatekeeper — and a name. Enter. The file data/characters/npc_gatekeeper.json now exists on disk; check your git status if you want proof.
  3. The form you're looking at is generated from the character schema — every field validated, references offered as dropdowns.

Notice the validation bar: the project now has a COVERAGE warning — character has no dialogue. The validator noticed before you did; it's that kind of colleague. Leave it for a moment.

4. Create a dialogue

  1. Dialogues → + New → id dlg_gate_first.
  2. The main panel is now the dialogue canvas. Click the entry node and write a line in the inspector's Text field — notice it's a serif prose field with a live word count: narrative text is typographically first-class.
  3. Set the dialogue's Default speaker to npc_gatekeeper.
  4. In the character's Dialogue Ladder field, add a rung pointing at dlg_gate_first. The COVERAGE warning clears — your character can now actually speak.

5. Watch validation work for you

Delete the dialogue (toolbar → Delete dialogue, confirm) and watch the validation bar: the ladder rung you just authored is now a dangling reference — a red REF error naming the exact spot. Click the issue row: it navigates straight to the character. Undo the deletion with Cmd/Ctrl+Z; the error clears. That save-validate-navigate loop is the core of how Parlance feels — nothing broken gets to hide.

6. Open something real

An empty project teaches layout; a real one teaches craft. Open The Mistfall Inn — the demo project that ships with Parlance, and the playable demo on this site — and poke around: three characters with ladders, a quest with three outcomes, route fixtures, zero validation issues under --strict.

Where next