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.

Lekhanam is available on the Mac App Store. Simply search for "Lekhanam" or click the download button on this page.

Download Lekhanam on the Mac App Store →

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 runs its AI entirely on your Mac — no cloud, no accounts, no internet required. The unified model catalog includes:

• Lekha AI 2B (default, ~1.5 GB) — Lekhanam's purpose-built model, tuned for long-form fiction. Fast and balanced; recommended for most writers.
• Qwen 2.5 Micro (1.5B) — the lightest option, quickest responses, smallest footprint.
• Qwen 2.5 Lite (3B) — a comfortable balance of quality and speed.
• Qwen 2.5 Standard (7B) — highest quality prose; best on Macs with 16 GB+ RAM.

You can switch models at any time from the AI panel. Every model runs on your Mac's Metal GPU and never sends your writing anywhere.

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

Start with Lekha AI 2B — it's the default, ships tuned for writers, and runs well on any Apple Silicon Mac with 8 GB+ RAM. If you want to experiment with alternatives, the model catalog detects your Mac's RAM and recommends a Qwen variant with a badge:

• Lekha AI 2B — default, ~1.5 GB, 8 GB RAM, tuned for fiction
• Qwen 2.5 Micro — 1.5B, 8 GB RAM, fastest responses
• Qwen 2.5 Lite — 3B, 12 GB RAM, good quality-speed balance
• Qwen 2.5 Standard — 7B, 16 GB RAM, highest quality prose

Download once — the model runs entirely offline forever after.

No. Every AI model in Lekhanam — Lekha AI 2B and the Qwen 2.5 variants — runs directly on your Mac's Metal GPU. Once a model is downloaded, it works entirely offline. No data is ever sent to Lekhanam's servers, Apple's servers, or any external service.

Internet is only used for the initial one-time model download.

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.

Every model is downloaded once and then runs offline forever. Approximate sizes:

• Lekha AI 2B — ~1.5 GB (default)
• Qwen 2.5 Micro — ~1 GB
• Qwen 2.5 Lite — ~2 GB
• Qwen 2.5 Standard — ~5 GB

You can delete any model at any time from Settings → AI to reclaim disk space. The default Lekha AI 2B is usually the only model you'll need.

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
• Tables (insert from the toolbar)
• Images (drag in or insert from file)

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

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 Focus View — an immersive, distraction-free mode where you write and plan one chapter at a time. The chapter's goal, POV, beats, and summary are visible alongside the editor, and you can navigate between chapters with arrow buttons without leaving the view.

The Chapters tab itself offers four switchable views:

• List — full chapter list with word counts, status badges, and drag-drop reorder
• Corkboard — visual index cards for planning scenes at a glance
• Outliner — nested hierarchical view of acts, sections, and chapters
• Read (Lekhanam View) — a continuous scroll reader showing all your body chapters as clean, flowing prose. Click any chapter heading to jump into the editor.

The Chapters tab has four views, toggled via the icon row at the top right:

• List — the default view; all chapters in order with word count, status (Draft / Revised / Final), and drag-drop reordering
• Corkboard — visual index cards spread across a grid, great for rearranging scenes and spotting pacing gaps
• Outliner — a nested tree showing acts, sections, and chapters in hierarchical form; ideal for structural editing
• Read — the Lekhanam View; a warm, distraction-free continuous reader showing all your body chapters as polished prose. Click any chapter title to jump straight into the editor.

Yes. Press ⌘F inside any chapter editor for inline find. For global search across your entire book, use the Find & Replace button in the Chapters tab toolbar (or ⌘H).

Global Find & Replace shows which chapters contain your search term and lets you replace all occurrences at once — ideal for fixing a character name change or hunting down repeated phrases across a full manuscript.

Yes. Use the Import DOCX button in the Chapters tab toolbar to bring in a Word document. Lekhanam reads the DOCX structure, splits it into chapters at Heading 1 boundaries, and preserves rich formatting — bold, italic, tables, and images.

You can import a single file or batch-import multiple DOCX files at once, making it easy to migrate a manuscript you've been writing in Word.

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.

Focus Mode (⌘⇧F) hides the header, sidebar, and all panels so you see nothing but your writing. Combined with Typewriter Mode, the active line stays centred on screen and non-active paragraphs dim to keep your attention on the sentence you're writing. Press Escape to exit.

Yes. Lekhanam supports:

• Tables — insert from the toolbar, with full header row and cell editing
• Footnotes — add numbered footnotes that export correctly to DOCX and PDF
• Annotations — inline comments highlighted in red that are automatically stripped from exports

Auto-save is enabled by default and can be toggled from the Dashboard. When on, your chapter content, character profiles, and storyboard edits are saved automatically within 1 second of any change. When off, you save manually. A save status indicator is always visible in the editor toolbar.

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.

Every chapter has a status badge visible on the Storyboard — click it to cycle through Draft, Revised, and Final. This helps you track your editing progress at a glance. Statuses are colour-coded: amber for draft, blue for revised, green for final.

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.

Yes. Lekhanam exports to three formats from the Export tab:

• PDF — print-ready, fully typeset with front/back matter, page numbers, and your chosen font and margin settings
• Word (.docx) — compatible with Microsoft Word and Google Docs, with preserved headings, styles, and paragraph formatting
• ePub — reflowable ebook format ready for Kindle, Apple Books, and Kobo

All three formats include your complete manuscript (front matter, body chapters, back matter) and are generated entirely on your Mac — no cloud service involved.

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 Core (editor, AI, cover design, PDF export) is free.

Lekhanam Pro (Word and ePub export) is a one-time purchase of $9.99 — but during the early adopter period, Pro is completely free. No subscription, no recurring fees.

Lekhanam will be available exclusively on the Mac App Store.

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

Yes. Lekhanam is available on the Mac App Store as well as direct download from this website as a signed and notarised DMG. Both versions include the full feature set. The direct download lets us ship updates more frequently between App Store review cycles.

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 — enough for the default Lekha AI 2B model and the Qwen 2.5 Micro variant. 12 GB is recommended for Qwen Lite, and 16 GB+ gives you headroom to run Qwen Standard (7B) for the best output quality.

The writing, cover design, export, and all non-AI features work comfortably on 8 GB. The RAM requirement only matters if you want to run a larger AI model.

Yes. Lekhanam is compatible with macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 15 Sequoia, and macOS 26 Tahoe. Every feature — writing, on-device AI (Lekha AI 2B + Qwen), voice dictation, export — works identically across all three. No special macOS version is required for the AI.

To run Lekhanam's local AI you need:

• An Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3, or M4)
• macOS 14 Sonoma or later
• 8 GB RAM (minimum — enough for Lekha AI 2B and Qwen Micro)
• 2 GB disk space for the default Lekha AI 2B model

Internet is only required for the initial one-time model download. After that, every AI feature runs fully offline on your Mac.

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.

AI models are the largest files. The default Lekha AI 2B is ~1.5 GB. Optional Qwen 2.5 variants: Micro ~1 GB, Lite ~2 GB, Standard ~5 GB. Voice models (Vosk + Whisper) add around 1 GB. You only keep what you choose to download — any model can be removed from Settings → AI to reclaim space.