Docs/Testing & publishing

Snapshots

A Snapshot is a frozen copy of your book at one moment: every chapter, Glossary Item, and Dynamic Component as they were when the Snapshot was taken. You take Snapshots on demand as restore points, and when you publish an expansion the platform freezes your latest Snapshot permanently. That way you can keep editing while the books your readers already paid for stay exactly as they bought them.

Where to find them

Open a book and look in the sidebar for the Snapshots panel. It lists every Snapshot for this book, newest first, with a display number, the optional name you gave it, and when it was taken.

What a Snapshot captures

A Snapshot captures the whole book:

Every chapter: paragraphs, headers, media blocks, Triggers.
Every Glossary Item: the wiki body, the facts, the tags, the category, and the item / living-entity / combat settings.
Every Dynamic Component: Decision Templates, Dialogue Templates, Dice Templates, Combat Templates, Trade Screens, Calculations.

A Snapshot covers the book only. It doesn't include your account settings, your payout state, or any reader's session history.

The three kinds

Manual: a Snapshot you took yourself. You can name it, up to 30 characters, to record why you saved it ("before chapter 4 rewrite", "first draft of the inn scene"). The platform assigns the display number and never reuses it.
Auto backup: the Snapshot the platform takes for you when you pick Restore & snapshot current first. It captures the current state before the restore runs, so you can get back to where you were if the restore wasn't what you wanted.
Published: the Snapshot the platform freezes every time you publish an expansion. This is the version your readers read. It never changes, no matter how much you edit the live book afterwards.

Status

Capturing the book happens in one step. By the time the row appears in the list, it's done. Each Snapshot carries a status:

Ready: the normal state. The Snapshot is fully usable.
Failed: rare. The capture failed partway, so you can't restore from the Snapshot, and it's safe to delete.

Snapshot caps

Each book keeps up to 5 manual and auto-backup Snapshots combined. The cap is the same for every writer. If you take one past the cap, the oldest Snapshot is evicted to make room: it stays in the list as history, but it can no longer be restored.

Note

Published Snapshots don't count toward the cap and are never deleted to make room. They're permanent records of what your readers bought. The cap only counts the manual and auto-backup Snapshots you take.

Restoring

Pick a Snapshot and click Restore to replace the book's current state with the Snapshot's. The list also offers Restore & snapshot current first, which takes an auto-backup of the current state before the restore runs. Use that one: a plain restore is one-way.

Note

A restore removes anything created since the Snapshot (chapters, Glossary Items, Dynamic Components) and returns the book to what the Snapshot held. A Reading Simulation session you started on the live book is reset: the next time you open the simulation, it starts fresh against the restored state.

Note

Restore is blocked once a book has a published expansion. The version your readers bought has to stay stable, and rolling the live book backwards would undermine what they paid for. Published content is permanent, so once an expansion is out the book can't be rolled back.

Snapshots and publishing

Every published expansion is tied to a Snapshot. The publish flow has you take a fresh Snapshot, then freezes it and pins it to the expansion. Readers read from that Snapshot, not the live book. The version they bought reads the same as it did on the day they bought it, whatever you edit afterwards.

Published Snapshots stay in the Snapshots panel. They're locked: you can't delete them or restore from them, because readers are still reading from them. They also don't count toward your Snapshot cap.

Exporting your book

The Snapshots panel also has an Export book button. It downloads your whole book as a single Markdown file: every chapter, every Glossary entry, and a short summary of your Dynamic Components. The same export is available from the Settings page under Export my books. You can export a book once a minute.

Note

The export is a manuscript: a copy for reading and safekeeping outside Verhaler. The platform can't restore a book from it. If you want something you can roll back to, take a Snapshot.