The binder

The binder is the left-hand panel — your project’s table of contents. It holds every document in your project as a tree you can rearrange freely, and it’s where you’ll spend most of your time navigating.

Documents, folders, and research

The binder holds three kinds of items:

• Folders group related material — for example, Part One or Characters.
• Text documents are the things you write in: chapters, scenes, notes.
• Research items hold reference material — see The Research workspace.

Folders and documents are more alike than they look: a text document can itself contain other documents, so a chapter can hold its own scenes without becoming a “folder.” You can nest items as deeply as you like.

Create new items with the + button or the right-click menu, and rename an item by double-clicking it.

Root folders

The top level of the binder is made of root folders. Two are always present and can’t be removed:

• Manuscript — the text that becomes your finished book.
• Trash — where deleted items wait (see below).

You can turn on additional roots as you need them — Research, Characters, Locations, Worldbuilding, Notes, and Templates. Hiding a root never deletes its contents; everything reappears if you turn it back on. Root folders are protected — they can’t be renamed, moved, or dragged into one another. See Root folders for the full list and how to enable them.

Reordering and nesting

Drag any item to move it:

• Drop between two items to reorder.
• Drop onto a folder (or a document) to nest inside it.
• Hover over a collapsed folder while dragging and it expands automatically so you can drop deeper.

The binder updates instantly, and binder moves are undoable. A few safety rules keep things sane: you can’t drop an item into its own descendants, and you can’t drag the protected root folders.

Labels, statuses, keywords, and metadata

Right-click a document (or use the Inspector) to tag it:

• Labels — a single colored tag per document, shown as a dot in the binder. Good for POV character, storyline, or anything you want to see at a glance.
• Statuses — where a document stands, shown as a badge: Outline, Draft, Revised, and so on.
• Keywords — free-form tags; a document can have as many as you like.
• Custom metadata — your own fields (text, dropdown, multi-select, date, number, or checkbox).

These tags power filtering, the Scene Board, the Outliner, and collections. See Labels, statuses & keywords and Custom metadata to set them up.

Backlink badges

When other documents link to the one you’re looking at, the binder shows a small backlink count on hover. It’s a quick way to see how connected a character, place, or scene is. Links come from the Inspector and from [[wikilinks]] in your text — see Wikilinks & backlinks.

Collections

Collections are saved groupings of documents that appear in their own section of the sidebar:

• A smart collection gathers every document matching rules you set (for example, status is Draft and label is Subplot B) and updates itself as your project changes.
• A static collection is a hand-picked list you curate yourself.

See Collections for how to build them.

Other views of the binder

The binder is one way to see your documents; the editor’s view switcher offers others. The Scene Board shows the same items as index cards on a corkboard or a spatial canvas, and the Outliner shows them as rows in a spreadsheet. They’re different lenses on the same tree — changes in one show up everywhere.

Trash

Deleting an item moves it to Trash rather than destroying it, and MUSE remembers where it came from so you can restore it to its original place. Items in the trash are styled faintly so you can tell them apart.

Nothing leaves your project permanently until you choose Empty Trash, which asks you to confirm. For more on protecting your work, see Backups & safety.