wobu

Keyboard, settings and files

Shortcuts, every setting, what is in the folder, what to try when something is wrong, and a glossary.

Keyboard

Every key Wobu listens for is in one list, and all of them are yours to change. Settings → Keyboard shows them, lets you press a new combination onto any row, shows what it shipped as beside anything you have changed, and offers Reset every shortcut. The same list, read-only, is one keypress away from anywhere — the shortcuts reference.

So treat the table below as what this version came with, not as the truth about your copy. It is also why tooltips throughout the app tell you the keys instead of this page doing it: a tooltip reads the real list, so it follows you when you change something.

Mod is Command on macOS and Control everywhere else. Your shortcuts are stored once, not per computer; only the way they are written on screen changes.

Default Command
Mod+K Command palette
Mod+/ Keyboard shortcuts
Mod+F Filter the navigator
Mod+Shift+L Library
Mod+\ Forge, and back
Mod+Shift+A Assets
Mod+, Settings
[ Toggle the navigator
] Toggle the inspector
Mod+Shift+C Collapse or expand everything
Mod+1 … Mod+5 Notes, References, Concepts, 3D, Relations
Mod+N New entity
Mod+Z, Mod+Shift+Z Undo, redo
Mod+E Enhance the open entity
Mod+Enter Generate

Three things cannot be changed, because an app where they could would be broken rather than flexible: Escape closes whatever is on top, Tab and Shift+Tab move around inside a dialog and stay inside it, and the arrow keys and Enter choose things in a list or a menu.

Most shortcuts stand down while you are typing, so [ in your notes is just a bracket. The exceptions are deliberate and named in the list — Jump to… works mid-sentence, because it is how you leave where you are.

Undo is the interesting one: inside a text box, Mod+Z belongs to the box, not to your world. Taking it would rewind an entire save every time somebody tried to take back a word.

Two commands, one shortcut You are allowed to use a combination that is already taken, and Wobu tells you what happened rather than letting you find out by pressing it: the first command wins, the others do nothing, and both the editor and the shortcuts list name the winner and offer to put things back. Combinations your system already uses — copy, paste, quit, reload — are allowed too, with a warning that the system will act as well.

Settings

Section What is in it
Providers and models What this world uses, and the keys on this computer. See Providers and keys.
Legal The terms and the privacy policy, read from the files that came with the app, and what you agreed to.
Introduction Runs the opening tour again. It never re-asks you to agree to anything.
Agent access (MCP) Letting an AI assistant read or change your world and the story you have written in it. See Agent access.
Storage Where the search index is, how big it is, and Rebuild search index.
Editor How long Wobu waits before saving. Raise it on a slow shared drive.
Appearance Theme — Match system, Light or Dark — and how big everything is.
Keyboard Every shortcut, changeable, with clashes named.
Static world wiki Exports your world as a browsable website. Only appears with a world open.
Diagnostics Where the log file is and how big, how much it records, a button to show it in your file manager, and the last of it readable in the app.
About Which version of everything you are running.
Licences Wobu's own licence, and everything it is built on.

Rebuilding the search index is always safe It holds no original of anything — it is made from your files. Delete it or rebuild it and nothing is lost; the next open just takes longer. If search misses something, or a file seems stuck, rebuild before you go looking anywhere else.

The website export

Export static wiki… writes out a plain website — no clever machinery, nothing to install — with a page per entity carrying its notes, description, facts, pictures, concepts and connections, an index grouped by sort, and a diagram of how everything influences everything else. It only reads your world, so it works on a read-only folder, and it refuses to write into a folder that already exists or that sits inside your world.

What is in the folder

A world is a self-contained folder, not one big database file. Put it on a NAS, a USB stick, or in version control.

Ashfall.wobu/
├── project.json                  name, id, which services it uses
├── nodes/
│   ├── style-guide/              the Art Style page
│   ├── world-bible/              the World Canon page
│   ├── species/vashk.md          settings at the top, then notes, then description
│   ├── culture/ember-guild.md
│   ├── setting/cinder-bay.md
│   ├── character/kael-vantris.md
│   └── creature/  prop/  environment/  vehicle/
├── assets/
│   ├── originals/a3/a3f9…c1.png  filed by contents, in folders by the first two characters
│   ├── thumbs/a3/a3f9…c1.webp
│   ├── loras/7d/7d42…9e.safetensors
│   └── meshes/7b/7b21…04.glb
├── generations/2026-07/<ulid>.json
└── .wobu/
    ├── sessions/<session-id>.json  who else has this open right now
    └── tmp/                        where saves are staged

The text files are the real thing. Everything else can be rebuilt from them. You get version history on your world, the ability to edit it in any other app, backups that just work, and no dread about upgrading.

Rules that keep the folder portable

Nothing knows where it lives The same shared drive has one address on your machine and a different one on somebody else's, so nothing inside ever writes an address down.
Pictures filed by contents Two people adding the same reference end up with the same one file. Duplicates cost nothing and pictures never clash.
Cautious filenames Lowercase, plain, nothing Windows or a shared drive would reject, and not nested deeply enough to hit a length limit.
No shortcuts or links They do not survive shared drives, zip files, or most sync apps.
Records are written once Never changed afterwards, so there is nothing to clash over.
No keys, ever Those are in your computer's password store. The world file only records which service it prefers.

What is deliberately not in the folder

The search index, your shortcuts, your favourites, your theme, where your ComfyUI is, the assistant password and the fact that you agreed to the terms all live on this computer instead — because each one is a fact about you or your machine, not about the world. Put any of them in the folder and they become everybody's.

The search index in particular lives with the app, filed by the world's id rather than its location, so it survives the shared drive being remounted somewhere else. That sort of file is known to get quietly corrupted on network drives, which is exactly why it is kept off them. Copy a world folder to a computer that has never seen it and nothing is lost — the first open rebuilds.

When something is wrong

What you see What to try
Search misses something you know is there Settings → Storage → Rebuild search index.
A page shows as broken Show it in the folder and open the file in a text editor — usually a hand edit or a sync app that broke the settings block at the top. Wobu will not write over it until it makes sense again.
Everything has gone read-only Check the folder's permissions. Wobu decides this once, when the world opens.
A banner says the drive is offline Wobu is trying again, waiting longer each time. The app stays readable from its own copy, and held saves go through when the drive comes back.
Enhance or Generate is greyed out No key on this computer for the service chosen, or the folder is read-only. Settings → Providers and models.
Generate fails on a Gemini key that works Image models need billing turned on; text is free. See Providers and keys.
3D says your credentials are wrong for no reason Check your computer's clock — signatures expire after a few minutes of drift.
A job failed and you missed the message The notifications panel in the bottom bar keeps every failure, with what it cost.
Reference pictures seem to do nothing Check the job you gave them, and check what the service accepts — the panel reports every picture it did not send.
Typing feels laggy on a NAS Raise the save delay in Settings → Editor.
Something needs reporting Settings → Diagnostics. Turn the detail up, make it happen again, then read the log in the app before you send it — keys are blanked out, but you should still see what you are handing over.

Glossary

These are the words the app itself uses. One thing, one word: if a term is in here, that is what every label, tooltip, empty screen and error message says, and what this guide says too.

Your world

World Everything in one project: the tree, its pictures, and everything made from it.
Entity Any page in the world — a species, a character, a prop, and the two pinned ones all work the same way.
Kind What sort of page something is. It decides the icon, the colour, where it sits in a prompt, which sections its description has, and what it can be joined to.
Singleton Art Style and World Canon — one of each per world, pinned above the line.
Nesting A page inside another of the same sort: a district in a city, a region in a region.
Link A connection from one page to another, with a job and a strength. Links go between sorts; nesting does not.
Attributes The short facts on a page — height, era, a colour — as opposed to the writing.
Stale A description whose notes, or something above it, changed since it was last enhanced.

Turning a world into a prompt

Influence stack Everything feeding the picture you are about to make, in order.
Layer One rung of that: style, world, ancestry, culture, place, subject, shot.
Fragment One line of text, or one picture, put in by a layer — with a strength and somewhere to go.
Compiled prompt The finished prompt, with every part of it traceable to the page that wrote it.
Enhance Turning your rough notes into a description in named sections. Nothing is saved until you have read it.
Preset What sort of picture you want: which parts to lean on, how it is framed, what shape, how many.
Influence snapshot Exactly what went into a picture, saved with it, so the same thing can be made again later.

Pictures

Reference A picture attached to a page to steer what it looks like.
Role What a reference is for — silhouette, palette, material, mood, pose, costume, or full reference.
Cover The picture shown on a page's card and its row in the list.
Asset Any file in the world's own store: a reference, a picture you made, a 3D shape, a trained look.
Unused An asset nothing points at and nothing uses as a cover. The only kind Wobu offers to delete.
Concept A picture you made, kept on the page you made it for.
Pinning Turning a concept into a reference on its page, so it feeds the next picture.
Seed The number that decides the random part of a picture. Lock it to get the same one again.
Turnaround Eight views of one thing, on one locked seed — what a 3D shape is built from.
Take One attempt at a single turnaround view. Every attempt is kept.
LoRA A small trained file that teaches an image model what one particular thing looks like.

Getting things made, and what it costs

Provider A service that does the work — Anthropic, Gemini, a ComfyUI you run, Tencent. You bring your own key for each.
Model The particular model at a service. One service usually offers several.
Job One thing Wobu has asked a service for: a picture, an enhance, a 3D shape.
Queue The jobs that have not finished yet. How many is in the bottom bar.
Receipt What Wobu keeps of a finished picture: the prompt, the settings, everything that went into it and what it cost. Written once and never changed.

Files, folders and other people

Project One folder holding a whole world. Not a database file.
Search index Wobu's own quick copy of the world, for searching and for reading fast. It holds no original of anything, so rebuilding it is always safe.
Read-only A world folder Wobu cannot write to. Everything is readable; everything that saves is switched off.
Two versions What you get when somebody else saved the same file first. Wobu keeps both and asks which you want; it never merges and never overwrites.
Ticket What lets somebody else's Wobu join this world. Made from the world menu, accepted on the opening screen, and to be shared privately.

For the curious

This guide describes what Wobu does. Why it does it that way — and what forced each decision — is written up in the design documents that live with the source code: Vision, Data model, UI layout, Influence engine, Architecture, File shares, Providers, MCP, Roadmap.

← Agent access (MCP)

This page comes from a file in the source code — the very same one the app shows you in its own built-in guide.