Saga Talu — User Guide
Everything you need to write, direct, and export your collaborative stories.
Saga Talu is a collaborative writing platform where you craft stories alongside AI characters. You play one character. The AI plays the rest of the cast — staying in character, remembering everything that has happened, and responding naturally to what you write.
Think of it as a private creative writing forum where your co-authors never sleep, never lose track of the plot, and always know their lines.
The name draws from the tradition of oral storytelling — a saga being a long narrative of deeds and events, and talu an echo of dialogue and exchange. Every story on this platform is a conversation between a human imagination and an artificial one.
What makes Saga Talu different from simply chatting with an AI is structure. Stories have casts. Characters have distinct voices, histories, and personalities that persist across every post. The world you build in the setting description shapes how every AI character thinks and speaks. Your Director's Notes set the tone. Your Lorebook holds the lore. The story grows as a proper narrative thread — and when you are done, you can export it as a finished book.
Creating your first story takes about five minutes. Here is what happens at each step and why each piece matters.
The AI Characters sidebar card is your primary control for triggering story responses. It appears on the right side of every story view.
Each AI character has their own Post button. Click it to have that character respond to the current thread. The AI reads the full context — your setting, character descriptions, director's notes, lorebook entries, and every post in the thread — before writing. You are in full control of who responds and when. You can trigger the same character twice in a row, have two characters respond before you write again, or hold a character back entirely until the moment is right.
When your story has two or more AI characters, a ✦ Group Respond… button appears below the individual triggers. Click it to open the Group Response panel.
The Story Panel is the gear icon on the left side of the story view. It contains two tabs: Settings and Cast.
A free-form field where you give the AI standing instructions that apply to every character and every post. Use it to set tone, pacing, style, and any constraints you want maintained throughout the story.
"Keep the tone dark and grounded. No comic relief. Characters speak in short, terse sentences unless emotional."
"This is a slow-burn romance. Characters are emotionally guarded. Subtext over direct statement."
Director's Notes persist across all AI responses for the lifetime of the story. You can update them at any time and the change takes effect from the next post onward.
As stories grow long, the AI's context window becomes a constraint. The Context Summary solves this: write a summary of what has happened so far, and the AI will use it plus the last ten posts instead of attempting to read the entire thread. Use the Generate button to have the AI produce a first draft, then edit to emphasize what matters most.
Set the status of your story: Active, On Hold, Complete, or Archived. This affects how stories appear in your Dashboard and Library.
The Cast tab shows each AI character and allows you to adjust a style note (character-specific instruction) and a temperature slider (higher = more creative and unpredictable; lower = more consistent and on-model) per character.
The GM panel sits on the right side of the story view. It gives you access to a separate AI that exists outside the story — not a character, but an advisor and narrator tool.
The Lorebook is your story's wiki. Access it via the book icon in the story view. Store locations, factions, historical events, items, people, customs, and anything else that defines your world. Entries have a title, category, body text, optional keywords, and an optional image.
Branches allow you to split the story at any post and explore an alternate path without losing or altering the original. Hover over any post and click the branch icon (⤷) to create a new story that begins at that point. The original story is untouched. Both versions exist independently.
Branches are useful when a character reaches a decision point with two viable directions, when you want to try a darker or lighter version of a scene, or simply to experiment before committing. You can branch a branch, creating multiple generations of alternate timelines from a single original.
Think of branches as drafts. Some will become more developed than the original. There is no hierarchy — a branch is just another story that happens to share history with its parent. You can export, share, or continue any branch independently.
The Export Studio transforms your story thread into a finished document. Access it via the quill icon in the story view. It is a full editing environment with a live preview, supporting export to EPUB, DOCX, and PDF.
Every story can be shared via a public read-only link. The person receiving the link does not need an account to read it. Open the story and click the Share button. You can configure how many posts to include and whether to show the cast list at the top.
The share link is permanent until you revoke it. You can revoke it at any time from the Share panel, after which the link will no longer work.
The Dashboard is your home view after signing in, accessible from the navigation bar.
Access your profile by clicking your name in the top navigation bar. It controls how you appear on Saga Talu and how the AI generates story posts for you.
By default, Saga Talu uses its own AI model for all story generation. If you have an API key from a supported provider, you can connect it in your profile and all your story posts will be generated using your own account instead of the system default.
This is useful if you want to use a specific model — such as GPT-4o, a Groq-hosted open source model, Grok, or a different Mistral tier — or if you are on a plan where you provide your own API access.
Saga Talu is in early access. You are among the first people to use the platform, which means two things: some things may not yet be perfectly polished, and your experience directly shapes what gets built next.
The feedback system is always available. Use the Send Feedback button in the footer of any page to report bugs, suggest features, describe what confused you, or simply tell us what is working well. Every submission is read.
AI response quality varies by story length, complexity, and the richness of your setup. The more carefully you build your setting, characters, and Director's Notes, the more consistently the AI will perform. Occasional responses that miss the mark are normal — that is what the regenerate button is for.
If you have a question not answered here, or something that needs a personal response, write to us at contact@sagatalu.com. We read everything.
Thank you for being here at the beginning.