How to reference chapters in your prompt

When My Spicy Vanilla writes a chapter, the AI reads the last few chapters of your story in full and the older chapters as summaries. Summaries keep the big picture, but they drop the small things: the exact words of a promise, the song that was playing, the way a room looked at night.

Chapter references fix that. In your prompt you point at any chapter you have written, from this story or from any other story in your account, and the AI reads that chapter in full while it writes. You decide what it should take from it: an event, a conversation, a mood, a place, or the exact moment where the story should pick up.

You will find it in the prompt field of the story writer: type @chapter. It works when you write a new story, when you continue one, and when you regenerate a chapter. The feature is in beta, and we would love to hear what you do with it.

What you can do with it

In the example prompts below, a label like The Lighthouse Keeper is a chapter picked with @chapter. Everything else is typed as usual.

1. Give the AI a better memory

In a long story, an important chapter can be thirty chapters back. Reference it, and the AI has its full text again: the dialogue, the details, the order of events. This is the way to bring back exact words, a small object, or a private joke that the summaries have long forgotten.

Example prompts:

Theo finally answers the question Mara asked him in The Lighthouse Keeper. Use her exact words from that night, and the same spot on the pier.

Bring back the brass compass from What the Tide Left. Mara finds it in her coat pocket and remembers who gave it to her.

2. Regenerate an earlier chapter without breaking what comes after it

When you regenerate a chapter in the middle of a story, the AI only knows the chapters before it. The chapters after it were written with the old version in mind. Reference a later chapter, and the new version leads into it: the same names, the same places, and nothing revealed that the later chapter still treats as a secret.

You can also reference the current version of the chapter you are regenerating, to keep the parts you like and change only the rest.

Example prompts:

Rewrite the dinner so that Mara leaves before dessert. Keep everything consistent with The Morning After: Theo still does not know about the letter.

Keep the first half exactly as in A Table for Two, then change the ending: they walk home in silence instead of arguing.

3. Borrow from a completely different story

A reference can point at a chapter of any story in your account. Reuse a place you described well, a scene whose mood you want again, or a character's way of speaking. You can even start a new story that picks up where an old one ended. The AI treats the other story as source material: its people and places come into your new story only when your prompt brings them in.

Example prompts:

Set this chapter in the same rooftop bar as Backstage Pass, with the same bartender and the same view of the harbor.

Start a new story that continues Last Train to Vellmoor ten years later. Iris runs the station now. Keep her voice and her habit of counting trains.

Give this first meeting the same slow, careful mood as the dinner in Salt and Cedar, but with new characters.

How to reference a chapter

1. Open the story writer: start a new story, open one of your stories and click Continue, or click Regenerate on a chapter.
2. In the prompt field, type @chapter and press Enter. You can also type @ and choose Reference a chapter… from the list that opens.
3. A search window opens. Type part of a chapter name or a story name to find the chapter. When you continue or regenerate, the story you are working on is listed first, marked This story; every other story follows under Your other stories. Each chapter shows its number and a short description, and Load more shows the rest of a long list.
4. Click the chapter. It appears in your prompt as a label with a small book icon, like The Lighthouse Keeper.
5. Write what the AI should take from that chapter, in the same sentence or right after it. The label tells the AI which chapter to read; your words tell it what to look for.

To swap a reference for another chapter, click its label and pick a different one. To remove it, delete it like any other word. You can reference up to five chapters in one prompt.

Writing a good instruction

A reference on its own tells the AI only that the chapter matters. The instruction around it does the real work. Say what you want, with a clear verb:

• Continue from where chapter ends — the new chapter starts at the last moment of that chapter, in the same place, with the same people.
• Bring back … from chapter — an object, a promise, a line of dialogue, an unresolved question.
• Echo the mood of chapter — the atmosphere and the pacing, with new events.
• Keep it consistent with chapter — for regenerations, so nothing contradicts a later chapter.
• Use the same place as in chapter — a setting you described well and want again.

Name the detail you care about. "Use her exact words about the lighthouse" gets you the words; "remember that chapter" gets you a general summary of it.

Reference the chapter that contains the detail, not the chapter before or after it. If a promise was made in chapter 12 and mentioned again in chapter 20, reference chapter 12 for the exact words.

Everything else about a good prompt still applies: keep it focused, describe what happens, and phrase your wishes positively. The Writing story prompts tutorial covers this in detail.

Good to know

• A reference works for the chapter you are writing now. For a fact that should matter in every chapter, the character's Background, the location's Description, or the Narrative Arc is still the right place, and a Memory plugin tells the AI what to keep track of. See How to use plugins.
• Only your own chapters are offered in the search. Chapters of shared stories that you can read but did not write are not.
• The referenced chapter is read while your chapter is being prepared; nothing is copied into your story. Generation can take a little longer, because each referenced chapter is read in full.
• If only one passage of a finished chapter needs a change, AI Edit is faster than regenerating the whole chapter.

Chapter references are in beta. If a reference was ignored, or the AI took the wrong thing from a chapter, tell us at [email protected]. Your examples are the fastest way for us to improve it.

Final tip

The safest first try: continue your story, reference the chapter that holds a detail you miss, and ask for exactly that detail in one sentence. Once you see how much the AI brings back, you will know what else to point it at.