📖 Reading in the App
Reading in the app means opening a story, choosing where to go next, and letting the app remember your place. This page will guide you through starting a topic, following choices, using the map and gem belt, and what happens when your connection drops.
Starting and continuing
On "Home", press "Start reading →" to open the featured story. Once you have begun, the button changes to "Continue reading →" and returns you to the story you opened last, at the point where you stopped scrolling. "Latest stories" lists recent stories, and "More stories" loads more.
To start a topic from the beginning, open the "Topics" tab and choose it.
Following the choices
At the bottom of a story, "Up next" shows the choices the writer offered. Press one to continue. A line at the top of a story, "You arrived here from", tells you which story brought you here. When a path ends, the app says "You found an ending" and offers "Open the map →" so you can see what else is left to explore.
If a story is not published yet, opening it shows "This story isn't out yet. Check back soon." with a "Meanwhile, pick another story" button that opens the map.
Using the map
A topic map shows every story as a node, with "You are here" marking the story you last opened. To open it:
- Press the map icon, labelled "Map", while reading a story.
- Press "See where this fits on the map" at the end of a story.
- Press "See the map" on a topic page, where a numbered list of the topic's stories is headed "The journey".
On a topic map, "All topics" opens the "Maps" screen. It shows a card for each topic with its belt and progress under "Pick a map", and a "See everything" section with every topic's tree. Filters on that section, labelled "Everything", "Read", "Published" and "Coming soon", highlight just those stories.
The gem belt
Each ending in a topic is a socket on a belt headed "Your belt". Reading an ending earns its gem, and endings that are not published yet show as locked, with a count of how many are coming soon. This ensures you can see at a glance how much of a topic you have explored.
Search, authors and settings
- Search: open the "Search" tab and type into "Search stories". It matches story titles and topics.
- Authors: the "Authors" tab lists the writers, and each writer's page lists their stories.
- Settings: choose "Light", "Dark" or "System" for the theme, pick an "Accent colour", and turn on "Hide AI-generated stories" under Content.
When "Hide AI-generated stories" is on, AI stories drop out of Home, Topics, Search and Authors, and inside a human-written topic's map they become an "AI story hidden" row so the stories after them stay reachable. An AI story always shows an "AI-generated" label by its byline.
When you are offline
The app keeps a saved copy of what you have recently read, up to a size limit. If it cannot reach Swift Axis, it shows the saved copy instead, so a story you opened earlier still opens. If there is no saved copy, you see "Couldn't reach Swift Axis. Check your connection." and a "Try again" button. A story that has since been unpublished is not shown from the saved copy.
The saved copy is a convenience for flaky connections. It is not a download feature, so stories you have not opened will not be available offline.