"VS Code is a terrible place to write a book.
I tried it. I ended up with six hundred markdown files and absolutely no idea where anything was. It was chaos. Inputs buried in subfolders. Drafts rotting in temp directories. I needed to see the work. Not the file tree—the flow.
So I built the view I needed. The Visual Companion isn't just a UI. It's the difference between having a 'repo' and having a publication strategy. All your inputs, drafts, and published pieces. Organized. Browsable. Annotatable. Finally."
The Problem
When you're running an AI content pipeline, you accumulate files. JSON briefs. Markdown drafts. Published articles. Image prompts. Critique documents. They live in folders, organized by workflow stage, and navigating them means either opening your file explorer or using your editor's sidebar.
Neither of these is optimized for reviewing content.
What You Want
- •Browse your drafts and published pieces visually
- •Read markdown rendered properly, not as raw syntax
- •Add feedback comments directly on paragraphs as you review
- •Capture new ideas quickly without context-switching to VS Code
- •Prepare articles for Substack by adding hero images via drag-and-drop
The Dashboard Makes All of This Frictionless
What follows is everything you need to build this yourself. The file structure. The UI. The features. All of it. You supply: your content directory, your AI assistant, and about 30 minutes.