Merrimo User Guide › Engines, tools, and settings

Customize workspace layouts and panes on Mac

In Merrimo on your Mac, you can tailor your work environment between the Prose manuscript editor and the Comic canvas, adjust sidebars, and inspect properties.

Switch between Prose and Canvas modes

Adapt the interface to the task at hand:

1. Press ⌥1 (or choose View > Prose) to enter Prose Mode: focus entirely on typing narrative scenes and character dialogue.
2. Press ⌥2 (or choose View > Canvas) to enter Canvas Mode: expand the drafting surface to full window size for drawing and panel layout.
3. While on the canvas, click the Source Text tab in the sidebar to read and edit your manuscript alongside panels, with automatic scrolling synchronized to your canvas selections.

Open a story in more than one window

Work on the same story in two places at once, for example writing in Prose in one window while you lay out pages on the Canvas in another.

1. With a story window in front, choose File > New Window (or press ⌘N). Another window opens on the same story, in the mode, sidebar selection and inspector you last used in the story’s first window.
2. Set each window up the way you like. Each has its own mode, sidebar selection, inspector and canvas view, so switching one to the Canvas leaves the other in Prose. On the Canvas, each window also keeps its own sidebar tab and filters, Media source, rulers, margin guides and minimap. A new window starts with the ones the story’s first window uses.
3. Settings that belong to the story itself, such as the grid, page layout and prose font, are the same in every window: change them in one and the others follow. So is whether comment pins are shown.
4. Edit in either window. Your changes show up in the other one once they are saved, as a collaborator’s would. ⌘Z undoes the changes made in the window you are in.

The agent works with the window you were in last. When it works on the canvas, it uses a window that is showing the Canvas, if one is. When you quit and reopen Merrimo, all of the story’s windows come back, each in the mode, sidebar selection and inspector it had. Your Mac decides whether windows come back after you quit, as it does for other apps: see Close windows when quitting an application in System Settings > Desktop & Dock, and hold ⌥ while quitting to do the opposite once.

Toggle sidebars and inspectors

Maximize screen space on smaller laptop displays:

1. Choose File > Save (or press ⌘S) at any time to save project changes to disk and local storage.
2. Press ⌥⌘I to toggle the Inspector pane on the right side of the window.
3. Choose View > Comments (or press ⌥⌘K) to summon the floating editorial comments panel.
4. Choose View > Enter Full Screen (⌃⌘F) to eliminate macOS window chrome during deep focus sessions.

The bar at the bottom of the sidebar, with the sync status and a count such as the manuscript’s words, fades away while the pointer is elsewhere and comes back when you move the pointer near the bottom of the sidebar. It stays in view while there’s a sync error, your session has expired, or a notice is showing above it.

Customize the toolbar

Put the tools you reach for most in the story window’s toolbar, and take out the ones you don’t use.

1. Choose View > Customize Toolbar…, or Control-click an empty part of the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar….
2. Drag an item from the sheet into the toolbar, drag an item along the toolbar to move it, or drag it out of the toolbar to remove it. Click Done when you’re finished.

Besides the items the toolbar starts with, the sheet offers:

• Prose / Screenplay: switches the chapter you’re reading between its prose and its screenplay, as View > Prose and View > Screenplay do.
• Back / Forward: returns to where you were before a jump, as Navigate > Back and Navigate > Forward do.
• Export…: opens the Export sheet, as File > Export… does.
• Text Style: Bold, Italic and Underline for the selected prose.
• Find: opens the find bar in the chapter, as Edit > Find… does.
• Agent and Jobs: open the Agent window and the Jobs window, while Use AI is on.

Items that only work on a chapter, such as Prose / Screenplay, Text Style and Find, are dimmed elsewhere. Items that belong to one mode, such as the canvas’s Arrange and Zoom, show in the sheet while that mode is showing. The Inspector button always stays at the right end of the toolbar. Merrimo keeps your toolbar the way you set it, and every story window uses it.

Talk to the agent from any window

The Agent window is one chat that goes with you around Merrimo. It floats above Merrimo’s other windows and works on whatever you have selected, so you can ask about "this chapter" or "the selected outfit" without opening an inspector.

1. Choose Window > Agent, or press ⇧⌘A.
2. Select what you want to talk about: a chapter, a Cast & World entry or a panel in the story window, a character or outfit in the Characters window, or a style in the Wardrobe Styles window. The chip above the message field names what the agent is looking at, then the story.
3. Type your request and press Return (Shift-Return starts a new line). The agent reads your selection again with every message, so you can select something else and keep going.

Before you start a conversation, clicking into another window folds the Agent window down to just its message field, so it stays out of your way. Once you have sent a message, it stays open while you work in other windows, so you can keep reading the replies. Click in the field, or press ⇧⌘A, to unfold it; press Esc or click the green button at the top left to fold it yourself. It unfolds on the latest messages. Drag the window by its top edge to move it. To start over, click New Chat at the top right, or press ⌘N while the Agent window is in front: it clears the conversation and leaves the window open. When you switch to another app, the Agent window hides; it comes back when you return to Merrimo if you have a conversation going, and otherwise stays hidden until you press ⇧⌘A. On macOS 27 or later, click the microphone beside the field to dictate your message; click it again to stop. When you stop, or press Return, the Mac tidies what you said with its own Apple Intelligence model: it takes out the ums, false starts and repeated words, fixes the punctuation and straightens long, rambling sentences, without changing what you meant. If Apple Intelligence isn’t available or turned on, or you turn off Tidy up dictation in Settings > Behaviors, your words stay as you said them. When the tidy-up changed your words, Use Original appears under the message: click it to put back exactly what you said. (When you press Return while dictating, the tidied message is sent straight away.) If the connection drops before the agent finishes, it asks again once by itself; if that fails too, Try Again appears under the interrupted reply: click it to ask again.

The agent works on the story whose window you were in last. Each story has its own Agent conversation, kept on this Mac, and clicking into another story's window switches to that story's conversation (if the agent is still answering, it finishes first). The inspectors have no agent tabs of their own: the Agent window is where you talk to the agent, and when you ask the prose editor to expand a paragraph or enhance a beat, the Agent window opens and proposes the rewrite there. An image the agent makes for the selected panel or Cast & World entry shows in the inspector straight away, and with two or more items selected on the canvas, ask the agent to make a new image from them. When the agent draws a panel whose characters, location or props have pictures, it draws from those pictures so they look the same from panel to panel: with Qwen Image 2.1 on your ComfyUI, or with your cloud image model when one is selected, and it tells you which. To have it draw from the panel’s text with your selected model instead, say so. When you ask for a change to a character’s, location’s or prop’s picture (“add an espresso machine”), the agent writes the change into its description on the Entity tab (a character’s appearance), renders it as the tab’s Render does, and makes the new take its picture, so you see the change in the description and under Generation > Prompt, and your own Render draws it the same way. To change the picture itself rather than render a new one, ask the agent to edit the picture, and name the model if you want a particular one: Qwen Edit 2.1 or one of your edit apps on your ComfyUI, or a cloud model such as Nano Banana. If an edit fails, the agent tells you why and asks what to do next, rather than rewording your request or trying another model by itself. When Use AI is off, the Agent window closes and Window > Agent is gone until you turn it back on in Settings > Providers.

Talk to the agent on the canvas on iPhone and iPad

On iPhone and iPad, the agent is right on the canvas, so you can talk to it while you look at the page. With Use AI on, a bar that says Ask or talk sits at the bottom of the canvas: on iPhone between Sidebar and Edit (the comments move into the More menu), on iPad under the page. If no AI model on this device can answer yet, its microphone and keyboard open the agent on Set Up AI instead.

1. Tap a panel to point at it. It’s outlined and tagged with its place on the page, such as Panel 3, and that’s what “this” means to the agent.
2. Hold the microphone and say what you want; let go to send. Or tap the microphone to keep listening until you tap its big microphone to send; X drops what you said, and the keyboard button lets you carry on by typing.
3. To type, tap the keyboard button. The bar over the keyboard shows what you’re pointing at. Type @ to name someone or something from your story: the characters, places and props that match appear above the bar, with their pictures.
4. While the agent works, the bar says what it’s doing, with a button to stop it. Its reply floats above the bar, with short answers to tap. Swipe the reply down to put it away. Tap the bar, or swipe up on it, to see the whole conversation: on iPhone it opens over the canvas; on iPad it opens as a column on the right.

Each change the agent makes, such as drafting a page, is named at the top of the canvas with Undo, which takes the whole change back in one step. Pictures it draws for you show in its reply, the newest outlined. In Edit on iPhone, the agent is the round button at the end of the editing tools: tap it to bring back its bar. On iPad, the tools for adding panels and balloons are behind the + beside the bar. When the agent needs the canvas while you’re reading a chapter on iPhone, it opens the canvas for you.

Build a world with the agent

A new story starts with an empty World page. The agent can fill it in with you: it asks how the story should look, asks a question or two, then writes the page and offers to add the first characters, locations and props.

1. Open a story whose World page has nothing on it yet: no premise, no style guide, and no characters, locations or props. When you select World, the Agent window opens beside it with Let’s build your world. It does this once per story, and only while Use AI is on; after that, open it with ⇧⌘A.
2. Click a starter, such as Help me build an epic fantasy or Surprise me, or describe your own story. Until you click in the message field, it shows an example of the kind of thing to write (“A heist comedy featuring rival magicians, set in 1890s Paris…”), changing every few seconds.
3. The agent asks how the story should look and shows three art styles as picture cards. Click one to make it the story’s art style; it answers for you with the style’s name. To see every style, click the Browse all link under the cards, which opens the Style Browser.
4. Answer the agent’s questions. Click one of the short answers under a question, or type your own; You pick lets the agent choose.
5. The agent writes the World page: the title, premise, style guide, references, things to avoid and author notes. Each field it wrote is marked Written by the agent, with Undo to put back what was there; after an Undo, Redo brings the agent’s text back. In the story window, ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z undo and redo everything the agent wrote at once. The mark stays until you edit the field or leave the page.
6. When it offers to add the first characters, locations and props, say yes, and they appear under Cast & World, filled in and ready to render. Each character gets an appearance and an outfit of their own from a wardrobe style that fits the story (the agent makes the style when none fits), plus a pose, expression, backdrop and lighting. Each location and prop gets a description and its studio settings, in the story’s palette.

You can move on at any point: ask the agent to start the first chapter, or select a chapter in the sidebar, and it carries on there from the same conversation.

To start again on any story, ask the agent to “help me build my world”. For what each part of the page is for, see Build your story’s world; to change the style later, see art styles.