The Ethical Web Design Playbook
How to create software that improves lives
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22 chapters
Wretify — a writing app for nonfiction writers
Writing is a quiet act
in a noisy world.
You already know this. You’ve felt the difference between a distracted hour and ten minutes of real focus. Between noise and signal. Between writing that drains you and writing that tells you something you didn’t know you knew.
A note from the founder
What kind of space does your writing need to come alive?
I tried every book writing software out there. Scrivener, Ulysses, iA Writer, Notion, Google Docs. None of them were built for the way I actually write.
I need a place where I can hear my own thoughts, with no one looking over my shoulder.
A place where clutter doesn’t dim my words.
Powerful, simple book writing software that disappears, leaving only the page.
I couldn’t find one.
So I built it.
A calm, private space for nonfiction writers.
Every word you write is saved instantly to your own Google Drive, in Markdown.
No tracking, no clutter, no hostage data — ever.
— Carlos, founder of Wretify
Clarity
The intelligence that has read everything you wrote.
A research assistant, a brainstorming partner, a writing coach — there to deepen your thinking, never to do the thinking for you.
Say it or type it. It listens, distills what you said, and asks the one question that takes you deeper.
And you choose what it reaches for.
BrainstormThink it through with Clarity — Clarity has read your book
ResearchReal papers, as cards you can drag onto the page — never invented
My WritingYour own passages, come home — found, never rewritten
Every session is saved — to your Google Drive.
I can’t get past the first paragraph of the identity chapter. I know what I want to say but it won’t come out.
The block might not be about the writing. It might be about what you’d have to admit once that paragraph exists.
What would it say if you weren’t worried about where it leads?
What would it say if you weren’t worried about where it leads?
That it felt like betrayal…
Speak again…
Your personal AI thinking partner
Define, Explain, Find blind spots, or check a fact
Highlight a claim and the assistant opens once — on the same line, without leaving the page.
Have you made it?
Introduction
Think planning, working memory and problem-solving.
A well-functioning prefrontal cortex is what lets us set goals, anticipate consequences, and regulate our behaviour to reach them — even against distraction. ¹
This is what most of us mean by discipline.
Define
Explain
Find blind spots
Check this fact
The explanation
The prefrontal cortex sits just behind the forehead and acts as the brain’s executive control centre — the region most involved in planning, decision-making, working memory, and holding a goal in mind against competing impulses. It’s what lets intention win over reflex.
Cite a real source (optional)
Friedman et al. (2021) — Prefrontal cortex in cognitive control & executive function · 1,621 cites
Miller & Cohen (2001) — An integrative theory of prefrontal function · 14,902 cites
Insert
Copy
Or write it in your own words
In your own words…
Insert my version
This sentence does a lot of quiet work — it takes a piece of neuroanatomy and turns it into something the reader can feel: the part of you that holds the line when everything is pulling the other way.
What works is the turn at the end. You define the function plainly, then let “even against distraction” land the stakes. That clause is the strong beat — keep it.
Replace selection
Insert below
Or write it in your own words
In your own words…
Insert my version
Your passage
A well-functioning prefrontal cortex is what lets us set goals, anticipate consequences, and regulate our behaviour to reach them — even against distraction.
The blind spot
The line treats self-regulation as one region working “well” — as if discipline were simply a healthy prefrontal cortex. It overlooks how much that control depends on conditions outside the brain: sleep, stress, blood sugar, and whether the environment is quietly working for you or against you.
Where I see it
1“a well-functioning prefrontal cortex”
2“regulate our behaviour to reach them”
The question
What if “well-functioning” isn’t a fixed trait but a state — one the very distractions you mention can quietly switch off?
Rewrite it yourself
In your own words…
Insert my rewrite
A source backs this up
“Concepts of cognitive control and executive function are defined in terms of their relationships with goal-directed behavior versus habits and controlled versus automatic processing, and related to the functions of the prefrontal cortex and related regions and networks.”
Friedman et al. (2021) — The role of prefrontal cortex in cognitive control and executive function. Neuropsychopharmacology Open ↗
From the paper’s abstract. Read it to be sure it fits your sentence — then cite it.
Add citation to this sentence
Done
Or rework the line, then cite
In your own words…
Insert my version
A thinking partner, not a ghostwriter
Real papers, zero hallucinated citationsZero hallucinated citationsEvery citation comes from a real search — your own writing first, then OpenAlex. When nothing supports a claim, it says so instead of inventing one.Names your blind spotBlind spotIt tells you what the sentence assumes and leaves out — the objection a careful reader would make. It does not rewrite the line for you.Define & check — fast, like a reflexDefine & checkHighlight, and the same box answers in place. No new tab, no prompt to write, and you never leave the sentence you were in.
One system, not two
Reading is the other half.
The week you don’t read is the week the writing thins. Wretify is built so reading and writing live in the same app, share the same AI, and feed each other.
‹Your Voice is Your ValueChapter 5
He had spent years collecting ideas the way some people collect stamps — with great care, and no intention of ever using them. The notebooks multiplied. The bookmarks grew. The ideas aged into artifacts.
The truth was a thing he’d been circling for years, the way a moth circles a porch light. Not because it can’t see the light, but because it can’t bear to look at it directly. Every notebook was another orbit.
What changed wasn’t courage. It was exhaustion. He ran out of ways to circle and finally walked straight in.
DiscussExplainPracticeNote
47%
Discuss
Start a conversation with the AI about this passage. It has read your own writing and it travels with you — so it is talking with you about your work, not to a stranger reading the same book.
Explain
Request a plain-language unpacking. The AI gets the context of the chapter around the passage.
Practice
The AI takes the idea and turns it into something you can begin doing today. Practice closes the gap between knowing and doing.
Note
Write it in your own words. No AI, no rewriting — just you and the passage. The bread and butter for any serious reader. Your note is saved to this chapter, exactly where it belongs.
The third surface
Turn your raw thoughts into your most powerful work.
A built-in reflective journal that turns scattered thoughts into clarity, your biases into insight, and raw information into meaning that’s truly yours. Always with you, searchable, and safe enough to be completely honest — it builds a personal archive that fuels every piece of nonfiction you create.
JournalFeedCalendar
The version of me that writes without asking permission
I noticed something this morning. The first sentence came out before the inner editor woke up. That almost never happens. What if the trick isn’t silencing the critic but simply being faster than it…
Why I keep circling the same chapter
Chapter 4 again. Third day in a row. I think I’m not stuck on the writing — I’m stuck on what admitting that paragraph means about where I actually am…
Reading and writing are the same muscle
Started the morning reading and within ten minutes had three ideas for the introduction. The reading isn’t separate from the writing. It IS the writing…
JournalFeedCalendar
‹May 2026›
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The version of me that writes without asking permission
I noticed something this morning. The first sentence came out before the inner editor woke up…
Over 100 reflective prompts across 7 categories (more coming)
Exploring Your Past SelfUnderstanding Your Core SelfLiving in the MomentEnvisioning a Different FutureConnections & RelationshipsWork & PurposeBody, Mind & Spirit
Your writing week
The day already knows what it is for.
Name the week, pin a plan to a day, and find it waiting when that day comes. Six steps, one screen — take it at your own pace.
MONDAY20:33SEPTEMBER 21, 2026
Today at a glance
Today at a glanceTuesday, September 22
Rewrite the opening of chapter four↳ Chapter 4
See the whole calendar →
This week’s FocusFinish chapter four
21–27 September 2026
Finish chapter four. Nothing else.
Today
Human Without Performance
Yesterday
Human Without Performance
This week
Podcast draft idea
Monday evening. The week has not been named yet.
The rule of three
Three books. Three articles. That is the whole room.
Not a starter plan. Not a setting you can raise on a frustrating afternoon. Wretify holds three active books and three active articles, and the only way to a new active book is to finish one of the three you are working on, or set one aside. Why only 3?The human brain can only hold about 3 things at once. More than that, and every unfinished book, draft, or idea starts pulling at the mind. Scattered. Guilty. Stuck.So we show only 3 books and 3 articles. Finish one. Then start the next. The rest? Safe. Quiet. Out of the way.Research: visual working memory holds ~3–4 items (Vogel & Machizawa, 2004); choice overload; Zeigarnik effect.
My Writing
A Psychological Playbook for Building a Life of Finished Projects
Last edit
Edited Sep 2
Words
40k
9 chapters
Face Down in the Arena
What the hard years actually teach
Last edit
Edited yesterday
Words
12k
14 chapters
That is the entire screen. There is no fourth book or article, and nothing to scroll to. Everything else you have ever started is safe, and out of sight, in a room you open on purpose.
In 1956 George Miller observed that people could hold about seven things in mind, and design has quoted him ever since. The experiments behind that number let people group items into chunks and rehearse them silently — two tricks that flatter the count.
In 2001 Nelson Cowan gathered the studies that closed those loopholes. With the tricks taken away, unassisted working memory holds three to four chunks. And a book in progress is not a digit. It is a structure, an argument, a voice you have to find again each morning — the largest kind of chunk a mind can carry.
So a fourth active book does not get a quarter of your attention. It quietly takes attention away from the other three, and you feel it as vagueness rather than as a cost.
Scrivener
Infinite folders. Built for storage.
Notion
Infinite databases. Built for storage.
Wretify
Three books. Three articles. Built for focused work and finishing what you started.
“If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.”Jim Collins
You own every word you write
No lock-in
Every word you write is stored in plain Markdown in your own Google Drive.
- It is already in your Google Drive.Not copied there later, and not held somewhere else first. The same Drive you already use, in a folder with your name for the book on it.
- Every chapter is a plain text file.The oldest, dullest, most boring format there is — which is exactly why Word opens it, your phone opens it, and so will whatever you are writing in twenty years from now.
- There is no export button.There is nothing to export. Stop paying, delete the app, forget we existed — not one word moves. It was never anywhere else.
Wretify does not own your work,
because Wretify never stored it.
Liberation brings a Notion workspace into your own Drive — every internal link healed from a code into a human title, nothing left behind. Free, and unlimited.
How to get your writing out of Notion→We don’t trap your writing.
We free it.
Where it
lives.
lives.
Every chapter, article and journal entry is a plain Markdown file in your own Google Drive. Not a copy of your work kept in step with ours — the original, in a folder you can open right now without us.
Who can
open it.
open it.
Markdown is text. It opens in any editor, on any machine, with nothing of ours installed. There is no export step to wait for, because there is nothing to convert.
If we
disappear.
disappear.
Wretify could close tomorrow and not one of your files would move. Your writing was never on our servers, so there is nothing here for us to take with us. That is not a promise we make. It is how the software is built.
The escape door is always there.You will never need it — because you were never trapped to begin with.
Chapter III · On who walks in
Who is this book writing software for?
· · ·
Wretify is for anyone who has ever sat down to write a paragraph and spent twenty minutes navigating the writing software before the work even began.
For the millions who tried to leave an app that held years of their writing — only to receive a zip file full of broken folders.
For writers who’ve read something they created with AI and barely recognized their own voice.
For those who write to understand themselves.
For anyone who wants their work to live somewhere they own — not on someone else’s server, in someone else’s format.
The math
The old way was a stack of writing software.
A subscription for thinking.
A subscription for writing.
A subscription for reading.
A subscription for journaling.
A subscription for saving what you find.
A subscription for writing.
A subscription for reading.
A subscription for journaling.
A subscription for saving what you find.
Wretify isn’t just another app — it’s a new way of organizing and interacting with your writing. Five apps unlocked for the price of a single subscription. All in one app.
Honest pricing
Your writing deserves a quiet room.
No tracking, no lock-in, no noise. Just you, the page, and an AI brainstorming partner that knows who you are and what you write.
Everything included
Wretify
$7/month
cancel anytime
The complete writing room. Every feature, no limits.
- ✓ Full distraction-free editor with Focus Mode
- ✓ Google Drive sync (your drive, your files)
- ✓ Unlimited books and articles
- ✓ Clarity, your AI, in three places: beside the page, on the page, and in the command box. Bring your own key (Claude, DeepSeek, Gemini Pro)
- ✓ An AI that brainstorms and reasons from your own work, never a blank slate
- ✓ Dictation on desktop
- ✓ Listen to your writing
- ✓ Import and listen to unlimited e-books
- ✓ Reflective Journal with over 100 coaching prompts
- ✓ Access 300M+ academic papers
- ✓ Unlimited use of the liberation tool (free your writing from Notion, no broken links left behind)
No tricks, no ‘export tax.’ Your words live in your Google Drive as plain Markdown. You can leave anytime — your writing is already yours. We will never sell your data because we don’t have access to it. By design.
Common questions
First 1,000 get three months free.
Opens October 27 · No card · Leave anytime · No questions asked
We’ll email you twice: the day Wretify launches, and when your free trial ends (with an exclusive offer). That’s it. We never sell your email or data.
Have a question? Talk to us