Adding letters, photos and documents

Old letters, photographs, a box of documents, a recording someone made years ago: all of it can feed your book. The app reads each item and weaves what it finds into your story alongside your interview answers.

The Material tab is where everything you've added lives, with filter chips for All / Image / PDF / Document / Audio and two buttons: Record a talk and Upload files.

Upload files

1. Tap Upload files. There's one browse button. You never have to say what kind of file it is.
2. Pick any mix of files. You can also attach files directly in the interview with the paperclip.
3. If you include an audio file, you'll be asked one extra question: Conversation or Narration. This decides how the audio is transcribed. See Recording audio.

Files that are already in your material are skipped with a note ("Already in your material, skipped: …"). Files that can't be read are reported so you know.

What you can upload

• Images: JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC.
• PDFs.
• Documents: DOCX, TXT, MD.
• Audio: M4A, MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG, WebM, up to 500 MB per file.

What happens after you upload

Each item's card shows where it is: queued → reading it now… → woven in ✓

Images and PDFs are read page by page, handwritten letters included. Word documents and text files are read directly. Everything found, whether moments, people, places, reflections or quotable passages, is merged into your story with a note of where it came from, and anything already known is reconciled rather than duplicated.

Photos also show where they've ended up: In "Chapter title" or Not placed in a chapter yet.

If a card seems stuck, see An upload is stuck on "reading it now…".

See what one item added

Tap a document or photo to open its detail page. It shows exactly what that item contributed:

• Moments it captured
• People, places & things
• Reflections
• In their own words: quotable excerpts that may appear word for word in the book. Letters and the subject's own writing are quotable. Recordings and articles are paraphrased instead.

While an item is still being read, the page says "Still reading this one — what it adds to the story will appear here shortly."

What deleting material removes. Delete this material removes the item and what it added to your story, except anything another source or interview answer also supports. If a letter was the only place a detail came from, that detail goes with it.