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Timeline

Your story's chronology — tracked independently from your chapter structure — with branching timelines, event tracking, and a knowledge system the AI can query.

Why the Timeline Is Separate from Chapters

Your timeline tracks when events actually happen in your story's world. This is deliberately independent from how you structure your manuscript. Stories aren't always told in order — you might have flashbacks, start at the end, run parallel storylines that converge, or tell events out of sequence for dramatic effect.

A scene in chapter 1 might depict something that happens at the end of your timeline. A scene in chapter 20 might be a flashback to the very beginning. The timeline captures the story's chronology, while your chapters and scenes capture the narrative structure. Keeping them separate gives you freedom to tell the story in whatever order works best, while still tracking when things actually happen.

Three Ways to Work With Timelines

Codiko gives you three different views, each suited to different tasks:

  • Timeline Panel — a zoomable visual graph in the workspace, for creating timelines, adding events, and seeing the big picture
  • Knowledge Matrix — a spreadsheet-style view for editing events and tracking what characters know at each point
  • Chronological View — a vertical timeline that positions events proportionally by date

The panel lives in the workspace. The Knowledge Matrix and Chronological views are accessed from the full timeline page (click "Full View" in the panel toolbar, or select Timeline from the navigation).

Timeline Panel

The resizable panel at the bottom of the workspace shows your timelines as a node graph. Each timeline is a horizontal track with events as nodes connected by lines. You can:

  • Add timelines and events
  • Drag to zoom and pan
  • Right-click events for branching, linking, inserting, and reordering
  • See which event is linked to the currently selected scene (highlighted with a glow)
  • Navigate with keyboard arrows between events

Knowledge Matrix

The Knowledge Matrix is a spreadsheet-style view where events run as columns and characters run as rows. It's designed for tracking what each character knows (or how they change) at each point in the story.

What you can do in the Knowledge Matrix:

  • Edit event dates — click any date cell to add or change an event's date (freetext: "1847", "Mar 1923", "15 Jun 2045", "500 BC")
  • Edit event descriptions — click the description row to add context for each event
  • Fill in knowledge entries — click any character × event cell to record what that character knows or how they've changed at that point
  • Add and remove characters — choose which characters appear on this timeline's matrix
  • Drag to reorder — reorder both events (columns) and characters (rows) by dragging
  • Insert and delete events — right-click an event header to insert before/after or delete
  • Add new events — click the + button at the end of the header row

Knowledge entries you add here are the same entries visible on character pages, and the AI uses them to give timeline-aware answers. For example, if a character doesn't learn a secret until event 5, the AI won't reference that knowledge when helping you write scenes set before that point.

Chronological View

The Chronological View displays a single timeline's events along a vertical spine, with event cards alternating left and right. Events with dates are positioned proportionally — events closer in time appear closer together, and events far apart are spaced further out.

This view is ideal for:

  • Stories that mirror real-world time (contemporary fiction, historical fiction)
  • Biographies and memoirs
  • Visualising the pacing and spacing of your story's events
  • Non-fiction projects where chronological accuracy matters

Events without dates are placed at the bottom in their sort order. The view supports a wide range of date formats including years ("2020"), month-year ("Mar 2020"), full dates ("15 Jun 2045"), ISO format ("2045-06-15"), and historical dates ("500 BC").

Creating a Timeline

Every project starts with a "Main Timeline." You can create additional timelines for parallel storylines, alternate histories, or flashback sequences. Click "+ Timeline" in the panel toolbar or use the full timeline page.

Events

Add events to a timeline to mark significant moments in your story. Events have a name, optional date, and optional description. They can be linked to scenes so you know exactly when each scene takes place in your story's chronology.

Scene-Event Linking

Link scenes to events with a position: before, during, or after the event. This builds a precise map of your story's sequence — even when scenes appear in a different order in your manuscript.

Branching

Branch from any event to create a diverging timeline. Right-click an event and choose "Create branch from here", or right-click a connection line and choose "Fork timeline here". Branches are useful for:

  • Alternate timeline storylines (time travel, "what if" scenarios)
  • Parallel POV timelines that converge later
  • Exploring different narrative possibilities

Cross-Timeline Event Linking

Events can be linked across timelines — if two characters experience the same moment from different perspectives (e.g. a war in both the baseline universe and the mirror universe), you can right-click an event and choose Link to event… to connect them. Linked events display a chain icon and a dotted connector line between them. When a scene linked to one of these events is selected, all connected events glow together.

Timeline Knowledge

Knowledge entries on characters, locations, and items can be linked to timeline events, creating a record of what's known at each point in the story. The AI uses this to give you timeline-aware answers — for example, a character won't reference information they haven't learned yet, and a location will be described differently before and after it was destroyed.

You can add knowledge entries from the Knowledge Matrix, from individual character/location/item pages, or from the AI chat.

Tips

  • Think of your timeline as "what actually happened" and your chapters as "how you're telling it." A thriller that opens with a murder and then flashes back would have the murder near the end of the timeline, even though it's chapter 1.
  • Use the Knowledge Matrix for complex ensembles. If you have many characters learning different things at different times, the matrix gives you an at-a-glance view of who knows what.
  • Add dates when they matter. Not every story needs specific dates. If yours does — historical fiction, a story spanning decades — dates unlock the Chronological View's proportional spacing.
  • Use branches for alternate POVs. If two characters experience the same stretch of time differently, give each their own branch and link the shared events.
  • Don't try to mirror your chapter structure. The timeline exists to free you from needing to tell the story in order. Let your chapters tell the story however works best narratively.