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Outline mode is where a piece begins. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, you gather raw material — fragments of thought, spoken notes, pasted text — and let Dear organize them into index cards. Once your cards are in order, you pick a structure, review the AI-generated plan, and send the whole thing to Write with one click.

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Switching to Outline

Select the Outline tab on the left side of the toolbar at the top of the workspace. You can return to Write at any time; your cards are preserved between switches.

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The Explore sub-tab

When you first open Outline, you land on the Explore sub-tab — a staging area for raw input. Use the switcher at the bottom of the panel to move between Explore and Outline. There are three ways to add material:
1

Talk

Press the voice button to start live transcription. Dear captures what you say in real time using live transcription. When you stop, the spoken text is committed as a new index card.
2

Type

Type a short note directly into the staging area and press Enter (or the send button) to create a card.
3

Paste

Paste a block of text. Dear splits it into chunks and creates one index card per chunk.
Each card receives an AI-generated header that summarizes the note. When consecutive cards share the same topic, Dear merges the voice segments automatically so related thoughts stay together.
Only typed text counts toward your human-written word total. Words that arrive through AI-generated headers are not credited.

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The Outline sub-tab

Switch to the Outline sub-tab to shape your cards into a plan. Dear reads your cards and generates a plan summary and a set of suggestions based on the structure you choose.

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Choosing a structure

Select one of four structures before generating the plan:

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Reviewing the plan

After you pick a structure, Dear generates:
  • A plan summary that describes how your cards fit together.
  • Suggestions — additional cards you can add to fill gaps in the outline. Each suggestion inserts at a specific position. You can refresh suggestions to get alternatives.
You can reorder cards by dragging them within the Outline sub-tab. Expanding a card reveals its full text.
Add at least three cards before switching to the Outline sub-tab. Suggestions only appear once there are enough cards for Dear to detect patterns.

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Sending the plan to Write (Stitch)

When the plan looks right, click Send plan to Write. This runs Stitch, which converts your ordered cards into heading and body blocks in the Write editor, then switches you to Write mode automatically. The cards themselves are not deleted — you can return to Outline at any time and continue adding material.