Run new writing past the canon you have already established and get back conflicts, citations, and suggested fixes.

When to use this

Reach for validation when you have written something new and want to know whether it agrees with everything you have written before. A draft chapter, a revision, a single paragraph you are not sure about — validation reads the new text against the entities, relationships, and rules already in your project and surfaces anything that contradicts them.

You do not have to wait until a draft is finished. PlotLens supports three different validation modes so you can pick the one that fits how you are working right now: a long-form report on whole documents, live feedback while you type, or a one-shot check of an excerpt you paste in.

The three validation modes

Mode	Trigger	Latency	Scope	Best for
Batch	Select documents and submit a job	Async — minutes	Whole documents or full manuscripts	End-of-draft sweeps, revision passes, pre-submission QA
Real-time	Type or paste in the editor	Sub-500ms (debounced)	The passage you are currently writing	Live drafting, when you want feedback as you go
Spot-check	Paste text and click Check Against Canon	About 2–80 seconds	A single excerpt up to ~2,000 words	Quick gut-checks on a scene, beat, or paragraph

All three modes return the same structured findings: severity, conflict type, source citation, and a suggested fix. They differ only in scope and how you trigger them.

Validation hub showing the three modes

How conflicts and severities work

Every conflict PlotLens raises has a severity, a type, and a citation back to the canon it disagrees with.

Severities map to three levels:

Error (red) — the new text directly contradicts established canon. Eye color flipped, a dead character speaking, a destroyed city standing again. Treat these as bugs.
Warning (orange) — an inconsistency worth a second look. Often ambiguous: a name that might be an alias, a timing that might be deliberate, a rule that might have an exception you intended.
Info (blue) — a note. Background context, a possible connection, something PlotLens noticed that is not necessarily wrong.

Conflict types include character inconsistencies, timeline conflicts, location contradictions, and custom canon-rule violations. Each finding links back to the specific entity, rule, or passage it disagrees with so you can verify the call yourself rather than taking PlotLens at its word.

Findings move through three statuses: unresolved, resolved (you fixed the text or the canon), and acknowledged (you read it and chose to leave it — useful for deliberate breaks or red herrings).

Batch validation

Batch validation runs a full audit over one or more processed documents. It is the right tool when you have finished a draft, returned from a revision pass, or want to vet an entire manuscript before sending it out.

How to run a batch validation

Open your project and go to Validation in the project sidebar.
Select the Batch tab.
Tick the documents you want to check. Use Check All Documents to select every processed document in the project.
Optionally edit the auto-generated session name. By default PlotLens names the run after the documents you selected.
Click Run validation.

The job moves to a queue and runs in the background. You can leave the page — it will keep running. The session lands in your validation history with a status of pending, then processing, then completed (or failed, if something went wrong).

Batch validation submit form

Reviewing the conflict report

Open a completed session from the history list to see the report. Each conflict shows:

Severity badge (error / warning / info)
Conflict type (character inconsistency, timeline conflict, rule violation, etc.)
A short summary of what disagrees
The cited canon source — entity, rule, or document passage
A suggested fix when PlotLens can offer one

Filter by severity or type to focus on errors first, and use the writer or sort filters when you have multiple sessions to compare.

Resolving and acknowledging conflicts

For each finding, choose one of:

Resolve — you fixed the contradiction (in the text or in the canon). The finding moves to resolved and stops appearing in the unresolved view.
Acknowledge — the conflict is intentional (a flashback, a lie a character is telling, a deliberate retcon). The finding moves to acknowledged and stays out of your way.
Leave unresolved — you are not sure yet. It stays at the top of the list for next time.

Resolution status persists across sessions, so you do not have to re-triage the same finding every time you re-run a batch.

Real-time validation

Real-time validation gives you live feedback while you write. Type or paste into the editor, pause for a moment, and PlotLens checks what you just wrote against your canon and highlights anything that conflicts.

How to enable real-time checks while writing

Open your project and go to Validation → Real-time.
Start writing or paste text into the editor.
Optionally set a context label so you remember which scene or chapter you are working on.

There is no submit step. PlotLens debounces your keystrokes and runs validation continuously over a WebSocket connection — you should see results within a fraction of a second of pausing.

Real-time validation in the editor

What the inline highlights mean

Conflicts appear as inline highlights at the exact location in your text where they were detected. Hover or click a highlight to see the finding panel with the full severity, citation, and suggested fix.

The footer shows running stats for the current passage: rules checked, total issues, per-severity counts, and an is valid indicator that turns green when nothing is flagged.

The “How it works” intro card is dismissible — once you close it, it stays gone.

Spot-check

Spot-check is a one-shot validation of a single excerpt. Paste in a passage, click a button, get a report. No project documents required, no live editor — just a quick gut-check.

How to spot-check a passage

Open your project and go to Validation → Spot-check.
Paste your passage into the editor.
(Optional) Add a context note — for example, “Chapter 12, the inn scene”.
Click Check Against Canon.

PlotLens loads your project rules, entity-derived rules, and search context, then runs the validator. Results stream back in 2–80 seconds depending on length and rule count, and appear as inline highlights plus a list of issue cards.

You can copy the report to your clipboard, or save it as a session if you want it to live alongside your batch history.

Spot-check passage editor with highlighted issues

Recommended passage length

Spot-check is built for excerpts. Keep passages under 2,000 words for the best results — PlotLens will warn you above that threshold and may time out on very long inputs. For full chapters or whole drafts, use batch validation instead.

If a check times out (the cap is 80 seconds), shorten the passage and try again, or move the check to batch mode.

Plan availability

All three validation modes are available on Plus and above. The Free and Lite tiers do not include validation.

Plan	Validations / month	Notes
Plus	200 / month	Plus is where validation starts. Counts cover all three modes combined.
Pro	Unlimited (fair use)	Daily fair-use ceiling applies.
Small Team / Studio / Production	Unlimited (fair use)	Per-seat. Higher daily ceilings on larger plans.
Enterprise	Unlimited	Custom limits negotiated per contract.

Daily fair-use is in place on unlimited plans to protect against runaway automated usage. Normal interactive writing will not hit it.

If you exhaust your monthly allotment on Plus, you can buy a validation pack (50 / 200 / 500 validations) from billing without changing plans, or upgrade to Pro for unlimited usage.

Limits and edge cases

Spot-check timeout (80s). If a check exceeds 80 seconds, you will see “This check timed out. Try again, or run it on a shorter passage.” Shorten the excerpt or use batch mode for longer text.
Rate limit (429). If you hit your monthly or daily ceiling, you will see “You have reached your daily validation limit. Your limit resets at midnight UTC.” Wait, buy a validation pack, or upgrade.
Empty canon (422). Spot-check requires at least one canon rule. If you have not defined any yet, you will see “You haven’t defined any canon rules yet. Create a rule to enable Spot Check.” See Canon rules to set up your first rule.
No processed documents (batch). Batch needs at least one processed document. If your project is empty or every upload is still extracting, you will see “No processed documents in this project yet.” and the Check All Documents button is disabled.
Permission denied (403). “You don’t have permission to run Spot Check on this project.” You are signed in but lack access to that project, or your plan does not include the mode. Ask the project owner for access or check your plan.
Partial failures. Spot-check runs its pipeline (rules, entities, context, timeline events, validator) in isolated steps. If one step fails, the others continue and the report is marked partial — you will see a warning card explaining which step did not complete. The findings you do get are still trustworthy; some context may be missing.
Long passage warning. Above ~2,000 words, spot-check shows a length warning suggesting you shorten the excerpt or switch to batch.
Real-time disconnect. If the WebSocket drops (network blip, server restart), the editor stops live-checking. Reload the page to reconnect.
Batch failure. If a batch session ends in failed status, open the session for the error message. Common causes: every document in the selection failed to parse, or the project has no canon rules at all. Re-upload affected documents or add at least one rule, then re-run.

Common pitfalls

Treating warnings as errors. Warnings flag ambiguity, not contradiction. A character with two valid nicknames will trip warnings forever if you keep resolving them. Acknowledge the canonical alias instead.
Running spot-check on a whole chapter. Spot-check is for excerpts. Past 2,000 words, accuracy drops and timeouts get more likely. Use batch.
Ignoring the citation. Every finding cites the entity, rule, or passage it disagrees with. If you cannot tell why PlotLens flagged something, click through to the citation — the disagreement is almost always obvious there.
Re-validating without resolving. If you never mark conflicts as resolved or acknowledged, every batch run shows the same backlog plus whatever is new. Triage as you go.
Forgetting to add canon rules. Validation runs against your project rules and entity-derived rules. With no rules and no entities, there is nothing to check against. Upload reference documents and add custom rules first — see Canon rules.
Expecting real-time to catch everything. Real-time checks the passage you are editing, not the whole project. End a draft with a batch run.

Canon rules — what validation checks against
Entity extraction — populates the entities validation reads
Timeline — events counted in validation context
Search — semantic context that informs findings
Billing & plans — validation limits and overage packs