Everything you want to
know about Lekhanam

Lekhanam is a professional book writing studio built exclusively for macOS. It gives serious authors everything they need in one focused app — a full-featured writing environment, local AI assistance, offline voice dictation, a cover designer, and professional PDF export.

Everything runs entirely on your Mac. No cloud, no account required, no one reading your drafts.

Installation takes under a minute:

1. Download Lekhanam-1.0.0-arm64.dmg from the Download button
2. Open the DMG file
3. Drag Lekhanam into your Applications folder
4. Launch from Applications or Spotlight (⌘ Space → type "Lekhanam")

On first launch, macOS may show a verification prompt — click Open. Lekhanam is signed and notarised by Apple so it's safe to open.

All your books, chapters, characters, and covers are stored locally in ~/Documents/Lekhanam/ on your Mac. The folder structure is:

• books.json — your book index
• books/{bookId}/ — individual book data, characters, and chapters

You can back up this folder manually, or include it in Time Machine. Nothing is ever uploaded to any server.

Lekhanam supports unlimited books, each completely independent. You switch between them using the book selector at the top of the app. Each book has its own chapters, characters, cover, snapshots, and word history.

You can work on one book at a time in the app window, but all your books are always there when you switch.

Yes — Lekhanam auto-saves everything as you type. Chapter content is written to disk within 500ms of each keystroke. Plan data, notes, and summaries save automatically on any change.

A save status indicator (unsaved → saving → saved) is always visible in the chapter editor. You will never lose your work.

Use the built-in uninstaller from the menu bar:

1. Open Lekhanam
2. Click Lekhanam → Uninstall Lekhanam… in the menu bar
3. Choose whether to delete your writing data from ~/Documents/Lekhanam/
4. Confirm — the app moves itself to Trash

If you keep your data folder, all your books will be there when you reinstall.

Lekhanam includes two fully private AI providers:

• Qwen Local Models — download a model once (micro, lite, standard, or premium) and it runs entirely on your Mac using Apple Silicon Metal GPU acceleration.
• Apple Intelligence — uses Apple's on-device FoundationModels framework (macOS 26 Tahoe+). No download needed, instant responses.

You can switch between providers at any time from the AI panel. Neither provider sends your writing to any external server.

Ghostwriter turns your story beats into polished prose. Write your scene as bullet-point beats — who's present, what happens, what emotions are at play — then click Generate. The AI produces vivid, continuous prose from your notes.

You choose a writing style first: Cinematic, Introspective, Minimalist, or Poetic. The result is editable text you can copy or refine however you like.

Enable "Assist Writing" in the AI panel, then select any passage in your chapter. A floating action menu appears with three choices:

• Expand — adds sensory detail and emotional depth to the selection
• Shorten — trims the passage to its essential meaning
• Sensory Boost — rewrites with vivid sight, sound, smell, texture, and temperature details

The result can replace your selected text or be inserted at the cursor — your choice.

Character Interview lets you have a multi-turn conversation with any character in your book. The AI reads the character's full profile — their psychology, ghost (core wound), lie, truth, voice patterns, mannerisms, and motivations — then responds in first person as that character.

It's useful for discovering how a character actually speaks before you write them into scenes, or stress-testing their reactions to unexpected events. The character never breaks the fourth wall.

Lekhanam's AI supports four distinct writing styles, switchable at any time:

• Cinematic — visual precision, action beats, kinetic energy
• Introspective — character psychology, internal conflict, emotional nuance
• Minimalist — Hemingway-style brevity, iceberg theory, purposeful white space
• Poetic — rich metaphor, sensory imagery, rhythmic cadence

Lekhanam automatically detects your Mac's RAM and recommends the best variant with a badge in the model catalog:

• Micro — 8 GB RAM minimum, fastest responses
• Lite — 12 GB RAM, good quality-speed balance
• Standard — 16 GB RAM, noticeably better prose quality
• Premium — 32 GB RAM, highest output quality

Download once — the model runs entirely offline forever after.

No. Apple Intelligence in Lekhanam uses Apple's on-device FoundationModels framework — the model runs directly on your Mac's neural engine. No data is sent to Apple's servers or any external service.

You do need macOS 26 Tahoe and Apple Intelligence enabled in System Settings → Apple Intelligence & Siri.

When generating a full chapter, Lekhanam uses a three-phase pipeline for higher quality output:

1. Architect — reviews your story context, checks character consistency and timeline, identifies emotional beats
2. Ghostwriter — writes the actual prose from your beats, applying the chosen style
3. Editor — polishes the output, catching overused words, weak constructions, and pacing issues

A stage indicator in the AI panel shows which phase is running.

Yes — if you have macOS 26 Tahoe with Apple Intelligence enabled, switch the AI provider to "Apple Intelligence" in the panel. No model download is needed and responses are instant.

The Qwen models require a one-time download (ranging from around 2 GB to 16 GB depending on the variant you choose).

Each chapter has four dedicated tabs:

• Write — rich text editor with formatting, AI assist, voice input, and word count
• Plan — set a chapter goal, POV character, and story beats as a checkable list
• Notes — free-form research, reminders, and ideas
• Summary — a short chapter summary for quick reference

All four tabs auto-save as you type.

The chapter editor supports full rich text formatting:

• Headings (H1, H2, H3), paragraph body
• Bold, italic, underline
• Bullet lists and numbered lists
• Blockquotes and code blocks
• Hyperlinks

Lekhanam is built for prose — the Export tab handles all typographic layout when generating your final PDF.

Lekhanam includes fully offline voice dictation — no internet required, no audio ever leaves your Mac.

It uses a two-stage system:

• Vosk — provides real-time interim transcription as you speak (so you see words appearing live)
• Whisper — runs at the end for high-accuracy final transcription

Tap the microphone button in any chapter tab and start speaking. Text is inserted at your cursor position.

Beyond regular chapters, Lekhanam supports professional book structure with three sections:

• Front Matter — Half Title, Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Table of Contents
• Body — regular numbered chapters and Part/Section breaks
• Back Matter — Appendix, Glossary, Bibliography, Index, Author Bio

The Table of Contents is auto-generated from your chapter list.

The Storyboard gives you a bird's-eye grid view of your entire book — all chapters with brief plot summaries and word counts. It's the place to step back from individual chapters and see your story's shape as a whole. You can reorder scenes by drag and drop directly in the grid.

Snapshots are Lekhanam's version control for your book. Save a named snapshot at any point — before a major rewrite, at the end of a draft, or when experimenting with alternate story directions.

You can preview every chapter inside any snapshot, restore it (which reverts your entire book to that state), or delete it. Nothing is overwritten without confirmation.

Yes. From the book Dashboard you can set daily, weekly, or monthly word count goals. A visual progress bar shows today's count vs. your target, and you can see today's total and the past 7 days at a glance.

Word count is tracked live in the chapter editor and stored locally in your word history.

Yes. Deleted chapters go to the book's local trash bin — nothing is permanently removed immediately. Open the Dashboard tab and navigate to the Trash section to restore any deleted chapter or character. You can also permanently delete items from there when you're sure.

Each character has a comprehensive profile covering:

• Basic — name, age, gender, hair colour, eye colour, skin tone, build
• Psychology — Ghost (core wound / formative trauma), Lie (false belief they hold about themselves), Truth (where they're slowly moving)
• Story role — motivation, stakes (what they stand to lose), role in the narrative
• Voice — speaking patterns, dialect, mannerisms, behavioural traits

The AI uses every detail in the Character Interview to respond in that character's authentic voice.

These are character arc psychology concepts drawn from story craft:

• Ghost — the core wound or formative experience that shaped who the character became. It drives their fears and defences.
• Lie — the false belief they hold about themselves or the world as a result of that wound (e.g. "I am unlovable", "Trust no one").
• Truth — the realisation they need to reach by the end of their arc to grow.

Filling these in makes Character Interview responses feel psychologically authentic rather than generic.

Yes — Character Interview is a multi-turn session. The AI maintains conversation context across all the messages within a single session, so the character remembers what was said earlier and can refer back to it.

You can clear the chat to start fresh (same character, new conversation) or Reset to switch to a different character entirely.

There is no limit. Create as many characters as your story needs. Each book maintains its own independent character list, so characters from one book don't appear in another.

Yes. The Characters tab has a search field at the top that filters your cast by name in real time. Useful when you have a large ensemble and need to find a specific character quickly.

The built-in cover designer includes:

• Front and back cover canvas with professional bleed and safe zone guides
• Text layers — font, size, colour, opacity, bold/italic/underline, rotation
• Image layers with resize, rotate, position, and filter/effect controls
• Background colour and gradient fills
• Rectangle shape layers
• Full layer panel with visibility toggle, reorder, and delete
• Zoom, snap-to-centre alignment, and undo/redo

Export as a high-resolution PNG at 300 DPI — print-ready.

The cover designer includes a curated selection of fonts suited to book covers:

EB Garamond, Georgia, Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Courier New, and Impact.

The Export tab generates a complete, print-ready PDF of your book including:

• Front matter (title page, copyright, dedication, table of contents)
• All body chapters in sequence
• Back matter (appendix, glossary, author bio, etc.)
• Automatic page numbering (Roman numerals for front matter, Arabic for body)
• Optional running headers

A print preview shows scaled page thumbnails before you export so you see exactly what the output will look like.

Yes. In the Export tab you can reorder chapters using the up/down arrow buttons or drag and drop. The order you set here is used for the generated PDF and doesn't affect the order in your main chapter list.

Lekhanam supports three book formats that affect page dimensions in the exported PDF:

• Paperback — standard trade paperback dimensions
• Hardcover — slightly larger hardcover page size
• Ebook — reflowable digital format dimensions

Select the format from your book's Dashboard tab.

Yes. The Cover Designer renders at 300 DPI — the standard resolution for professional print. The exported PNG file includes bleed zones so it's ready to upload directly to print-on-demand services like KDP, IngramSpark, or Lulu.

Currently Lekhanam exports to PDF (full book) and PNG (cover). DOCX and EPUB export are on the roadmap for a future update. If these formats are important to you, let us know via the Contact page — user feedback helps prioritise what ships next.

No. Your writing never leaves your Mac. All storage is local JSON files in ~/Documents/Lekhanam/, both AI providers run entirely on-device, and voice transcription is fully offline.

Lekhanam does not collect analytics, telemetry, or usage data. There is no account, no login, and no internet requirement for any core feature.

The AI only receives the context you explicitly provide for a given task — the beats you write in Ghostwriter, the selected text you want to expand, or the character profile for an interview. Your full manuscript is never bulk-sent to the model.

Either way, both AI providers run entirely on your Mac — nothing is transmitted to any external service.

Yes. Lekhanam supports Touch ID biometric locking on compatible Macs. When enabled, the app requires your fingerprint before opening, keeping your drafts private even if someone else uses your Mac. Enable it from the Dashboard tab → Settings section.

Everything lives in ~/Documents/Lekhanam/. Back it up any way you like:

• Time Machine — it's inside Documents so it's automatically included
• iCloud Drive — move or symlink the folder into iCloud Drive
• Manual copy — duplicate the folder to an external drive

The Snapshots feature also lets you save named point-in-time states of your book from within the app.

Yes. Lekhanam is signed with a Developer ID Application certificate and notarised by Apple. This means macOS Gatekeeper verifies the app before it runs — you'll never see an "unidentified developer" warning, and macOS confirms the app hasn't been tampered with.

Lekhanam is a one-time purchase. Pay once, own it permanently — no monthly fee, no annual renewal, no subscription. All updates for the version you purchase are included.

Check the Download page for the current trial and pricing details. We want every author to be confident in Lekhanam before purchasing.

Lekhanam is currently distributed directly from this website as a signed and notarised DMG. A Mac App Store version is under consideration. Direct distribution lets us ship updates faster and avoid App Store sandbox restrictions that would limit certain features.

Your books are stored as local files, so they don't automatically sync between Macs. However, you can move the ~/Documents/Lekhanam/ folder to an iCloud Drive location to access your writing from multiple machines. Check the Download page for the current licence terms.

Model files are stored in the app's resources and survive typical app updates. In rare cases where a model format changes significantly, a re-download may be needed — but this would be clearly communicated in the release notes.

Lekhanam requires an Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3, or M4 chip) running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Intel Macs are not supported — Apple Silicon is required for the Metal GPU acceleration that powers local AI and voice transcription.

8 GB RAM minimum for the Micro AI model. 16 GB is recommended for a comfortable experience with the Standard model. 32 GB gives you access to the Premium model for the best output quality.

The writing, cover design, export, and all non-AI features work well on 8 GB. The RAM requirement only matters if you want to use the local Qwen AI.

Yes. Lekhanam is compatible with macOS 14 Sonoma and macOS 15 Sequoia, as well as macOS 26 Tahoe (which additionally enables Apple Intelligence features). All core writing, voice dictation, and export features work on Sonoma and Sequoia.

To use Apple Intelligence in Lekhanam you need:

• macOS 26 Tahoe (or later)
• Apple Intelligence enabled — System Settings → Apple Intelligence & Siri → toggle on
• An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later)

If Apple Intelligence isn't available or enabled, Lekhanam will explain what's needed when you switch to the Apple Intelligence provider.

The Lekhanam app itself is under 200 MB. Your books and covers are tiny — even large manuscripts with many images rarely exceed a few hundred MB.

The Qwen AI models are the largest files: Micro ~2 GB, Lite ~4 GB, Standard ~8 GB, Premium ~16 GB. Voice models (Vosk + Whisper) add around 1 GB. These are all optional — use Apple Intelligence if you want great AI without the disk footprint.