Draft Versioning Tool
Save a version
stored in this browserTimeline
Save a version above — the timeline tracks the word count from draft to draft.
Scope and limits
A version is a label and the text you saved under it, kept in this browser. The timeline compares word counts in order, and the latest-change panel compares the last two versions word by word.
There is no server, no cloud history and no automatic snapshots — clear your browser data and the versions go with it. It stores text, not files, so paste the plain text of each draft rather than uploading a document.
The draft versioning tool saves labelled snapshots of a draft in your browser and shows the word count moving from version to version, with a word-level comparison of the last two.
What is Draft Versioning Tool?
A draft versioning tool answers a small but constant question: how did this draft get here? You save a snapshot under a label — "after the rewrite", "Draft 3 — cut the subplot" — and the tool keeps the text, counts its words and lines the versions up in a timeline that shows what each one gained or lost against the one before. It is the cheapest form of revision history, and the one a writer will actually maintain.
The timeline is the point. Watching the word count move is how cutting and padding become visible: a version that gained two thousand words without a plan usually marks the scene that ran away, and a version that lost five hundred is either a good cut or a hole. The tool does not judge either way; it shows the arithmetic and lets you draw the conclusion. It also keeps every snapshot's text, so a version can be loaded back into the editor when an earlier passage turns out to be better.
Because the versions are labelled, the history reads like a set of milestones rather than a stream of timestamps. You can see at a glance when the draft doubled, when the subplot came out and when the ending was rewritten, without opening any of the versions. That is the record a writer actually consults months later, and it costs one click per milestone to keep. Loading an old version back into the editor is part of the same idea: a cut scene can be restored, a changed paragraph compared, and the question of which version is better answered with both in front of you rather than from memory.
Comparing the last two versions uses the same word-level diff as the document diff viewer, so the newest change is reported as added and removed words and a percentage of unchanged text. That is enough to see whether a pass was a light polish or a substantial rewrite, and it keeps one comparison calculation in one place across the domain.
A version is a label and the text saved under it, held in this browser only. There is no server, no cloud history and no automatic snapshot on a timer, which is a deliberate limit as much as a limitation: a writer who saves a version when a draft reaches a milestone keeps a clean, intentional history, rather than a stream of saves produced by a background process. Clear your browser data and the versions go with it, so anything worth keeping should be exported as text.
The tool stores text, not files. It does not open a .docx, does not track changes inside a word processor and cannot merge two versions. It is a set of labelled snapshots with a word-count history and a comparison of the newest pair, and it says so plainly. For a working draft that is usually all the version control a writer wants. A snapshot costs nothing, and one saved before a bold edit is the cheapest insurance a revision has.
How to use Draft Versioning Tool
- Paste or type the draft into the text area and give the version a label.
- Save the version; it is kept in this browser with its word count.
- Read the timeline to see how the count moved from draft to draft.
- Check the latest change panel for the added and removed words.
- Load an earlier version back when a passage worked better before.
When to use Draft Versioning Tool vs related tools
Use the draft versioning tool when a draft is moving through revisions and you want a simple record of how its length changed. When you need to read what actually differs between two saved drafts, the Document Diff Viewer shows the change line by line, and for a single word total the Word Count Tool is quicker.
If the versions being tracked are scenes rather than a whole draft, the Scene and Chapter Organizer keeps the word counts on a board instead.
Privacy & Security
This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.