Welcome to ELI - The Worldbuilding Notebook That Lives on Your Hard Drive

ELI is a desktop worldbuilding app for TTRPG Game Masters, fiction writers, and anyone who builds worlds for fun. Create interconnected entities, drop pins on custom maps, track your timeline, write your manuscript - all stored locally in a plain SQLite file on your machine. No accounts. No subscriptions. No cloud required.

This is an early-access release. ELI is feature-rich and actively used, but it's still in development and rough around some edges. If you're the kind of person who enjoys shaping a tool as it grows, you'll fit right in.

What Makes ELI Different:

You Own Your Data

Everything lives in a standard SQLite database on your hard drive. Open it, back it up, move it - it's just a file. No login required to access your own world, ever.

No Rigid Entity Types

ELI doesn't force you into preset categories like "Character" or "Location." Build your own entity templates with custom fields, dropdowns, and structures that fit your specific game system, novel, or homebrew setting. If you can describe it, you can template it.

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Collaborative Without the Cloud

Keep your GM secrets private with per-entity and inline field privacy. When you're ready to share, ELI uses a P2P-style sync system - you point it at a self-hosted PocketBase server (a single free binary, runs on a spare PC or a cheap VPS) and your party syncs world data without anything living permanently in someone else's cloud.

Maps, Timeline & Fantasy Calendars

Import your own maps and drop pins linked to entities. Track events on an interactive timeline with epochs and zoom levels. Manage in-world dates with fully custom fantasy calendars - define your own months, weekdays, and multiple moons.

Author Mode 

A Scrivener-style manuscript binder for writers. Nest and reorder chapters via drag-and-drop, set per-chapter word targets, track daily/weekly/monthly writing goals, take version snapshots, and follow character arcs tied directly to your timeline - all without leaving ELI.

Get Your Data Out Export to Markdown (Obsidian-compatible), HTML, JSON, and RTF. Your world isn't locked in.

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Good to know before you download:

• Windows and Linux only (no Mac, no mobile)
• Collaborative sync requires a self-hosted PocketBase instance - there's a setup guide included, and it's easier than it sounds, but it's not one-click
• This is in active development - new features are shipping regularly, and some rough edges remain

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Spotted a bug? Have a feature idea? I'd genuinely love to hear from you.

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