An IDE for Web Novels, Not Web Apps

What it does

Vela is an Electron desktop app that wraps a React-based IDE around long-form fiction writing. It replaces the usual chatbot-and-Word workflow with a split-pane workspace—file tree, editor, AI panel, and terminal—where authors manage worldbuilding, generate outlines, draft chapters, and run prose through sequential rewrite, refine, and review stages. All project data lives in a local SQLite database with a lightweight vector engine for semantic retrieval, and the app can run fully offline when paired with a local model.

The interesting bit

The clever angle is treating creative writing like a codebase. Vela applies software-engineering discipline to fiction: worldbuilding documents act as schema, the RAG knowledge base performs lore-aware context retrieval to prevent character drift, and the rewrite → refine → review pipeline resembles a CI/CD chain for prose quality. It is essentially version control for fictional canon, minus the merge conflicts.

Key highlights

• IDE-style quad-panel layout with resizable panes, dark theme, and JetBrains/VSCode-grade window management
• End-to-end fiction pipeline: worldbuilding → auto-outline → chapter drafting → rewrite → refine → review loops
• Local RAG over SQLite with a lightweight vector engine; the README claims million-word knowledge-base capacity and semantic chunk retrieval to maintain continuity
• BYOK routing across OpenAI, DeepSeek, Gemini, Claude, Ollama, Zhipu GLM, and OpenAI-compatible endpoints, with task-specific model assignment
• Native MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration for hooking in external tool servers
• Cross-platform: macOS, Windows, and Linux via Electron

Verdict

Grab it if you are a novelist or web-fiction author who wants structured, offline-capable AI assistance without shipping drafts to the cloud. Ignore it if you need a simple, browser-based text editor; this is a specialized, Electron-based IDE built specifically for fiction workflows.