Frequently asked questions

QUILL is a screen-reader-first writing environment for Windows. It is designed so that people who use assistive technology are first-class users, not an afterthought: every action announces a clear outcome, everything works from the keyboard, and nothing reaches the network without your explicit say-so.

QUILL is Quality, Usable, Inclusive, Lightweight, Literate - the values the whole project is built around.

Anyone who writes, with a particular focus on blind users, screen-reader and keyboard-only users, accessibility professionals, researchers, developers, and students. If you have found mainstream editors noisy, inconsistent, or hard to navigate with assistive technology, QUILL is built for you.

QUILL targets Windows, where it integrates with NVDA, JAWS, and Narrator. The 0.5.0 Beta is Windows-only. The core logic is platform-agnostic, but the shipping application and its screen-reader bridges are Windows-specific.

Yes. QUILL is open source under the MIT license. Contributions are welcome - see the contribution guidelines.

Two options are available, both for Windows 10 or later, 64-bit, and both include an embedded Python runtime:

• System installer - approximately 70 MB, installs to Program Files and adds QUILL to your Start menu.
• Portable ZIP - extract to any folder and run from there, no installation required.

All assets are also listed on the GitHub releases page.

A full writing environment: tabbed multi-document workspace, command palette, interactive status bar, selection workflows, long-document navigation, abbreviations and snippets, search and compare tools, Read Aloud, EPUB support, Notebooks, Sticky Notes, Macros, Workspace Snapshots, optional AI (Ask Quill), optional remote files, document intake for many formats, feature profiles, and the Quillin extension platform. The full announcement details every section.

The foundation is complete and the beta is already capable enough for serious daily work. Some workflows are more polished than others. Some integrations depend on optional local tools. Behavior in certain areas will continue to be refined based on real-world use. The announcement explains what the team is most interested in feedback on.

Use Help, Report a Bug from inside QUILL. This is the best path because it includes the details the team needs to reproduce and understand issues. Use it for bugs, accessibility issues, confusing workflows, feature requests, screen-reader behavior reports, and general feedback.

A live Q&A session on Saturday, June 20, 2026, from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern. Open to new users, experienced users, accessibility advocates, developers, and anyone curious about QUILL. Meet the team, see the product in action, ask questions, and help shape the road to QUILL 1.0. Register on Zoom. Registration is free.

NVDA, JAWS, and Narrator, with parity as a goal: an action should announce the same meaningful outcome regardless of which screen reader you use.

Every command reports its result as text the screen reader speaks - for example, "Wrapped 3 words in bold" or "Nothing selected." A command that succeeds silently is treated as a bug, not a feature.

Yes - everything is reachable and operable from the keyboard. Dialogs have explicit default actions, predictable focus, and no keyboard traps. The command palette gives keyboard access to every command in the application.

Yes. QUILL includes structured selection tools designed around screen-reader use. You can start a selection, extend it, complete it, return to the start, reselect previous text, and expand or shrink selections by word, sentence, line, paragraph, or block. Selection is deliberate and reviewable, not dependent on visual feedback.

Yes. QUILL uses stock, accessible controls and honors your system settings, including high-contrast themes. This documentation site also respects prefers-color-scheme and prefers-reduced-motion.

Please report it - accessibility issues are a priority. Use Help, Report a Bug from inside the app. Details are in the contribution guidelines.

Download QUILL using the system installer (installs to Program Files, adds QUILL to your Start menu) or the portable ZIP (extract and run from any folder, no installation required). Then open the user guide for writing, navigation, the command palette, and settings.

Profiles let you shape the editor around your needs. The available profiles are Essential, Writer, Developer and Power Text, Accessibility Professional, and Full QUILL. Choose a simpler profile for a clean writing experience, or enable a more complete profile for automation, scripting, AI, remote files, and extension support.

QUILL is plain-text-first and supports plain text, Markdown, HTML, CSV, Word documents, EPUB, PowerPoint, spreadsheets, and PDF through its document intake system. OCR-assisted paths, Pandoc integration, and document intake reporting are available. The user guide lists supported formats and how import and export behave.

Notebooks support long-form projects by organizing a folder of files into a single working environment with entries, headings, bookmarks, sticky notes, snapshots, and optional writing goals. For multi-document projects, Notebooks turn QUILL into a dependable workspace, not just a file editor.

Abbreviations let you define short triggers that expand automatically into longer text - common phrases, signatures, accessibility review notes, code patterns, documentation structures, or any text you type repeatedly. Expansion can be turned on or off and managed from within QUILL. For screen-reader users and keyboard-first writers, abbreviations reduce typing effort and improve consistency.

Yes, optionally. QUILL can open and save files via FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, HTTPS, and GitHub. These features are off by default and never run silently in the background. Enable only the remote file features you need.

Under your Windows app-data folder (%APPDATA%\Quill), in schema-validated JSON stores written atomically with recovery backups, so a crash or power loss will not corrupt your configuration.

QUILL uses atomic writes (write-to-temp then replace) and keeps recovery copies of its stores. Autosave runs in the background. The goal is that you never lose configuration or work to an unexpected shutdown.

No. There is no background telemetry, analytics, or tracking. The privacy document describes exactly what is and is not collected.

Not without your explicit, per-action consent. QUILL's "no silent network calls" rule means any feature that would send data shows visible progress and announces the outcome, and you opt in each time.

Secrets are stored in the Windows Credential Manager where available, with a DPAPI-encrypted fallback. Document content is never written to logs or diagnostics.

AI features are optional and explicitly opt-in. Turn AI off and AI features are hidden entirely - nothing AI-related runs silently. Turn it on and every networked AI action is a deliberate, per-action choice with visible progress. See responsible AI use.

Ask Quill is the conversational AI surface inside the editor. You can ask for help writing, editing, summarizing, restructuring, or working with selected text. When an AI operation would change your document, QUILL uses a review-first model: the proposed change is shown to you and must be approved before it is applied. There are no silent edits.

Local model workflows, Ollama, Ollama Cloud, OpenAI, Claude, OpenRouter, Google Gemini, and custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints. You can use a local model so that nothing leaves your machine at all.

No. The same "no silent network" rule applies: an AI action that needs to send your text asks first, shows what is happening, and announces the result. You are always in control.

Yes. The core writing experience is fully local. Networked features are opt-in extras, not requirements. Use a local AI model and nothing reaches the network at all.

A Quillin is a small, sandboxed extension that adds commands, snippets, menus, and hotkeys to QUILL. It is described by a manifest.json and comes in two layers: declarative snippets (no code) and Python or Node.js handlers (real logic, isolated in a subprocess).

Quillins run under a default-deny capability model: a Quillin can only do what it declares, and sensitive capabilities (filesystem and network) additionally pass a per-action consent gate at runtime. Python and Node.js handlers run out-of-process in a sandbox. A crash in a Quillin cannot affect your editor or your document.

Bundled Quillins ship with QUILL as trusted, reviewed first-party features and are enabled by default. Third-party Quillins run through the same sandbox but are disabled by default. You review, enable, disable, reload, or remove them through the Quillins Manager.

Only if it declares the matching capability and you approve each use at runtime. There is no way for a Quillin to silently read files or reach the network.

Through the Quillins Manager (Tools menu), an accessible dialog that lists installed Quillins, shows each one's manifest and granted capabilities, and lets you enable, disable, reload, or remove any of them.

Start with the tutorial, which builds one from scratch. The authoring reference covers the manifest schema, capability catalogue, and the Python and Node.js APIs in full. For a snippet-only Quillin, the Snippet Wizard builds the manifest interactively without any coding.

Not necessarily. Layer 1 Quillins are pure declarative snippets - text with placeholders like ${selection}, ${date}, ${word_at_cursor}, and ${uuid} - with no code and no capabilities. That covers many common needs.

Yes. Layer 2 Quillins support both Python and Node.js handlers. Your handler runs out-of-process in a sandboxed subprocess under the same capability and consent model as Python handlers.

Run the submission linter: python -m quill.tools.quillin_lint <dir> --strict. It validates your manifest against the published JSON Schema, runs the contract validator the app enforces, and checks submission structure and capability hygiene. A clean --strict run is the bar.

Open the Quillin submission issue (it scaffolds the manifest JSON for you), then open a pull request with the Quillin submission template. The full process and review criteria are in the submission guide.

The Quillin Author Covenant: announce every outcome, be keyboard-complete, declare the minimum capabilities, no silent network or telemetry, readable source (no obfuscation or sandbox-escape), and clear licensing. Every submission attests to it.

Do not open a public issue. Follow the private reporting process in the security policy.

Capabilities are default-deny, filesystem and network access are consent-gated per action, Python and Node.js handlers run out-of-process in a sandbox, and every dialog and network egress point is reviewed by automated gates in CI.

Code, documentation, accessibility testing, and Quillins are all welcome. Start with the contribution guidelines for setup, architecture boundaries, and quality checks.

The core and I/O layers never import the UI toolkit, persistence is atomic and schema-validated, the UI thread owns all widgets, and there are no silent network calls. The contribution guidelines and the product requirements document spell these out.

See the governance document for how decisions are made and the maintainers list for who stewards the project.

Use GitHub Discussions for Q&A and early design exploration, and the issue templates for specific bugs or proposals. For live questions, join Office Hours on June 20.