Guides

Building your world and cast with Threadbound's Codex

By the Threadbound team · October 2026

Switching it on and choosing a starter set

Install Codex from Settings, Modules. It is switched on per project. When you install it, you pick a starter set: Fantasy world, Science fiction, Contemporary or Blank (which gives you just a Character category). The set only decides your starting categories and fields. After that everything is yours to rename, add to or delete.

Four sections

A switch at the top of Codex moves between four sections:

• Characters is your cast, with its own list and profile pages.
• World is places, objects, organisations, peoples and creatures.
• Lore is magic systems, languages, religions, eras and customs.
• Plot is every plot event with the Codex entries linked to it.

All of them are the same kind of entry underneath, so a character can live in a city, be a nation's ruler, and still appear in that nation's list of what it contains.

Categories and locations

Every entry has two independent properties. Its category says what it is (a lake, a city, a character). Its location says where it sits, to any depth: a city in a region in a nation. That means you can list all the lakes by filtering by category, or open a nation and see everything inside it at any depth.

An entry can also have "Also in" places, for things that cross borders, like a river that runs through two countries. In the World sidebar, switch between Categories (grouped by type) and Locations (the containment tree). A nation's Contains tab lists what is inside it, grouped by category, either everything beneath or only what is directly inside.

Entries and fields

An entry has a name, aliases, a one-line summary, rich-text notes, and whatever fields its category defines. Fields come in several kinds: short and long text, numbers, dates in your project's calendar, single or multiple choice, yes/no, and links to other entries. Edits save as you type.

Link fields are Codex's relationship system. A "Ruler" field on a nation shows up as "Ruler of" on the person it points to, with no extra work. Typing a name that doesn't exist yet offers to create it on the spot, so you can build outwards from whatever you're writing.

The categories manager, at the bottom of the sidebar, lets you add categories and fields, reorder them by dragging, hide a field without losing its values, and duplicate a category (copy City to make Town). A category that still has entries can't be deleted until they're moved.

Characters

Characters are kept apart from the World on purpose. "+ New character" offers a basic template for minor characters and a detailed one for major ones. A character opens a profile with tabs for Overview, Description (appearance, personality, backstory, wants, fears and so on), Relationships and Notes.

The Characters list groups by role, with your protagonists at the top, and can be filtered by role, faction, location or the thread a character appears in. Relationships such as parent and child, rivals, mentor and student are recorded once and read from either side, and you can add your own types. The Relationships tab also shows "In the world", meaning links elsewhere in Codex that point to the character.

Lore and history

Lore entries (magic systems, languages, religions, eras) open profile-style pages. The History view in Lore lays out your eras on a proportional strip and a chronological list. Each era shows the plot events whose dates fall inside it, worked out from the dates, with nothing to link by hand. An era with no end date is treated as ongoing.

Linking Codex to your plot

Every entry and character has an Appearances tab: the threads and events it is linked to, in timeline order, and how many scenes cover them. Links come in two kinds. Setting means it happens here, and rolls up the location tree, so an event set in a city also appears under its nation. Involved means it takes part, and doesn't roll up.

You can link from an entry's Appearances tab, or use the Plot section, which lists every event with its linked places and people and lets you tag a whole outline quickly. Codex never changes your threads or events themselves; the links are stored on the entry.

If you use Manuscript too, Codex also finds where each entry is named in your prose, by plain name matching on your own device with no AI involved. It suggests events you may have forgotten to link, and you confirm each one, so nothing is linked silently. For characters it can also point out long gaps where they don't appear.

Backups, trash and other windows

Codex entries are part of the normal backup. Deleted entries go to a Recycle Bin inside Codex and can be restored. "New window" opens Codex in a second window beside your Timeline or manuscript. On a phone, the World sidebar becomes a drawer, and lists show fewer columns.